University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · ChemistryThe Resistance Research Lab
Paul Hergenrother · Champaign, Illinois
Research Focus
Paul Hergenrother's lab focuses on developing new antibiotics to combat drug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria and on creating targeted cancer therapies. By understanding how drugs enter and exit bacterial cells, they aim to invent antibiotics that can effectively treat infections caused by difficult pathogens like E. coli. The lab also works on personalized cancer treatment by designing drugs that target specific abnormalities in cancer cells, advancing multiple promising drug candidates to clinical trials.
antibioticsGram-negative bacteriadrug resistancecancer therapypersonalized medicineefflux pumpcompound synthesisdrug discoverysmall molecules
Research Aims
4AIM 01Discover novel antibiotics to combat drug-resistant Gram-negative pathogens.
AIM 02Develop targeted anticancer drugs based on specific tumor defects.
AIM 03Investigate the rules governing drug accumulation in bacteria.
AIM 04Identify chemical features that allow antibiotics to evade efflux in Gram-negative bacteria.
Skills the Lab Values
cell culturedrug formulationin vitro assaysanimal modelshigh-throughput screeningchemoinformaticsmedicinal chemistryPCRWestern blotdrug characterization
Output against the department
Publications450top 22% of dept.48th of 216
this lab
most publishedleast published
Citations14ktop 36% of dept.77th of 216
this lab
most citedleast cited
Career totals from OpenAlex, compared against labs that share a department. A department spans everything from one paper to tens of thousands, so bar heights are on a log scale — otherwise the largest lab would flatten every other bar to a line.