Professor Max Cryle

AMR IMPACT THEME
  • AMR Therapeutic Solutions
EXPERTISE
  • Antibiotic biosynthesis and engineering
  • Biocatalysis
  • Biochemistry
  • Structural biology
  • Antibiotic discovery and development

Professor Max Cryle is a senior research fellow and the head of the Reengineering Glycopeptide Antibiotics lab at the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute. He is also the director of the Monash Macromolecular Crystallography platform, leader of the Victorian node of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Innovations in Peptide and Protein Sciences, and a former EMBL Australia Group Leader. Max obtained his PhD in chemistry from the University of Queensland in 2006 before moving to the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg as a Cross Disciplinary Fellow of the Human Frontiers Science Program. He was subsequently awarded funding from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to establish his own group to investigate glycopeptide antibiotic biosynthesis as part of the Emmy Noether program. Max’s research has resulted in > 100 peer-reviewed publications, in journals including Nature, Nature Communications, and Angewandte Chemie.

Professor Max Cryle and his team use multidisciplinary approaches spanning chemistry and biology to investigate the biosynthesis of glycopeptide antibiotics. The overarching goal of this research is to reengineer the biosynthesis of complex peptide natural products to develop more effective next-generation compounds for treating bacterial infection and overcome the severe threat posed by antimicrobial resistance (e.g. MRSA).

AMR FOCUS
  • Characterising the mega-enzyme biosynthetic machineries that produce important antibiotics, with a focus on the glycopeptide antibiotics
  • Reengineering natural biosynthesis pathways to produce novel antibiotics
  • Developing new strategies to harness innate immunity and create hybrid antibiotics
IMPACT
  • Exploiting biocatalysis and chemical synthesis to generate new antibiotics
  • Redesigning antibiotic biosynthesis to enable production of modified antibiotics
  • Overcoming antimicrobial resistance by exploiting novel strategies to kill superbugs