Toni Kline
Staff Research Scientist IV, Microbiology Dept, Seattle, Washington
Areas of Specialization
chemical biology, mechanism based drug design, hit to lead optimization, parallel synthesis, antibiotic and anti-cancer drug discovery, prodrug and targeted delivery strategies
Education:
1973 University of California, Berkeley A.B. in Biochemistry
1976 University of California at San Francisco M.S. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry
1979 University of Alabama in Birmingham Ph.D. in Chemistry
1979- Oregon State University
1980 Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemistry (Prof. James D. White)
1981- State University of New York at Stony Brook
1982 Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemistry (Prof. Glenn D. Prestwich)
I am currently the Principal Investigator of the Antibiotic Drug Discovery project within the Northwest Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases (NWRCE), a multidisciplinary group committed to understanding and combating NIAID priority –as well as newly-arising—pathogens. I direct a small synthetic chemistry group involved in the design and synthesis of novel compounds to probe lipid A biochemistry, bacterial signaling, secretion of virulence factors, and other prokaryotic pathways. Our focus is on virlence mechanisms and the molecular events that occur at the interface of the bacterial-host ecology. My group has a sustained interest in discovering, validating, and pursuing novel therapeutic targets for antibacterial drugs. I personally believe that academic research can have impact on both groundbreaking basic science and innovative—and practical—results. Our work on inhibitors of bacterial virulence factor secretion led to the filing of a patent (WO 2009137133 20091112).
Current collaborations outside of the RCE include a a chemical biology approach to target identification for the hepatoprotective silymarin flavolignans, the development of novel crosslinking agents for the study of complex protein-protein interactions, design and synthesis of reporter substrates for a novel target against M. tb., and a scaffold hopping approach to identify novel ligands against a newly-discovered G-protein coupled receptor.
Career Objectives
Small molecule chemistry afford one an almost unique opportunity to design, build, validate, analyze, and reap the results of your own tools, all in a relatively compact time-fame. As a synthetic/medicinal chemist I have been building and using such tools, along with the drug candidates that result from good tool application throughout my career. My enduring interests remain the creation and development of small molecule approaches to address significant medical and bioorganic problems. The hallmark of these programs is that synthetic chemistry is integrated with the complementary work of biochemists, physiologists, pharmacologists, immunologists, clinicians, molecular and cell biologists, epidemiologists, and others in related disciplines. My experience in compound design and synthesis has been in several therapeutic areas, with an emphasis on antibiotic and anti-cancer, and I believe that the complex pathways and difficult diseases in these areas can be confronted by a focused, multidisciplinary effort
Address: Department of Microbiology University of Washington Box 357710 Seattle, Washington 98195
klinet@u.washington.edu phone (206) 543-9587 work