The NWO Innovation Fund Chemistry has awarded eight LIFT projects between university researchers and companies. NWO Chemical Sciences contributes a total of 1.5 million euros to the various projects and businesses match 0.5 million euros. LIFT is a new public-private partnership form that was introduced in 2015. A LIFT project involves at least one company and one research institute both working in chemical research.
Dr. Anna Hirsch (RUG ), in a collaborative project with Dr . Matthew Groves (RUG ) and Dr . Gudrun Lange ( Bayer CropScience) has been awarded with one of the grants for the following project:
On the way to innovative antibiotics and herbicides
Resistance to antibiotics and herbicides is currently a serious problem. The researchers will design new molecules that inhibit an essential enzyme for the growth of pathogenic bacteria and weeds in a specific way . To do so, they will first elucidate the structure of the enzyme, after which they will adopt a rational design approach to obtain new inhibitors. Ultimately, the inhibitors can be developed to better antibiotic or herbicides with a completely new mechanism of action.
