Adri Minnaard awarded a TOP_PUNT grant

Finding Mycobacterium tuberculosis’ Achilles heel using chemical immunology

Tuberculosis, which is caused by infection with Mycobacterium tuberculosis ( Mtb ), is responsible for millions of deaths annually. The Mtb cell wall is a complex mixture of compounds that has strong effects on the immune system. Thanks to genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and lipidomics of Mtb, we now know the identity of many components of the Mtb cell wall. Unfortunately, purification of these cell wall constituents in order to unravel the role of the individual components, provides insufficient amounts for in depth immunological study, and does not result in sufficiently pure preparations for clinical application.

Adri Minnaard, together with his colleague G. A. Van der Marel are awarded a TOP_PUNT grant where they propose to synthesize the most important M. tuberculosis cell wall components in sufficient amounts, and to study their role in the host immune response in molecular detail.

You can read here more information about this grant.