Mapping the metabolic dark matter of the microbiota: from molecular discovery to drug activation

About
Even commonly used drugs can generate molecules whose effects on body remain unknown. I will show how an unexpected signal in public data led us to discover bacterial modifications that enhance the activity of a +75-year inflammatory bowel disease drug while other transformations do the opposite, abolishing drug activity. By connecting chemical discovery to patient samples and biological experiments, this work opens a broader question: what overlooked molecules shape inflammation, metabolism and treatment responses, and how can we uncover their functions?

Bio
Vincent Charron-Lamoureux is a postdoctoral fellow in Pieter Dorrestein’s laboratory at the University of California, San Diego. He holds a PhD in microbiology from Université de Sherbrooke, Canada, and completed additional research training at the University of California, Berkeley. His distinctions include prestigious Canadian fellowships and first-author publications in Nature Communications and Nature Protocols. He develops reverse metabolomics approaches to uncover overlooked molecules and investigate their biological relevance. By combining microbiology, mass spectrometry, AI and public-data mining, his research connects chemical discovery to a central question: how does microbial chemistry shape drug activity and host physiology?

Hosted by PI Miguel López,  NeurObesity Group, CiMUS

Certificates of attendance will be provided upon request at cimus.xestion [at] usc.es (cimus[dot]xestion[at]usc[dot]es). Please do not forget to enter your name and surname in the printout given during the lecture.