{"id":11584,"date":"2013-10-07T15:02:35","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T15:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/?p=11584"},"modified":"2013-10-07T15:02:35","modified_gmt":"2013-10-07T15:02:35","slug":"big-thinkers-david-rowley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/2013\/10\/07\/big-thinkers-david-rowley\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Thinkers: David Rowley"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11585  alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/1223\/Dave-Rowley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>Title<\/strong>: Associate Professor, Biomedical Sciences<br \/>\n<strong>Expertise<\/strong>: Microorganisms from unexplored environments; secondary metabolites produced by marine microbes; bacterial chemical communication; and antibiotic drug discovery<br \/>\nOne of the more frightening medical trends today is our growing resistance to antibiotics, which we take for everything from ear infections to life-threatening blood conditions. As people use antibiotics for more and more ailments, the ability of germs and bacteria to mutate and adapt has increased, often making them stronger than the medicines available to treat them. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <strong><a title=\"Link to CDC website article\" href=\"http:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/features\/antibioticresistance\/\">has called preventing antibiotic resistance \u201cmission critical.\u201d<\/a><\/strong><br \/>\nOne important person in this critical mission is Pharmacognosy Professor<strong> <a title=\"Link to URI Professor Rowley faculty web page\" href=\"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/meet\/david-rowley\/\">David Rowley<\/a><\/strong>, who, with his students, is turning to the world\u2019s oceans for possible new infection-fighting molecules. Pharmacognosy is the study of the medicinal properties of compounds from such natural sources as the ocean and plants.Most of our current antibiotic drugs derive from natural products produced by terrestrial microorganisms, so as we try to stay one step ahead of the pathogens, the most logical next place to look is at marine microbes,\u201dhe said<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Professor Rowley says the marine environment provides an endless bounty of microbes that could lead to the next generation of life-saving medicines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He and his students are studying bacteria found in mud sediment from a remote region of the South Pacific. He says preliminary results are promising with microbes that are \u201cperhaps unlike any others that have been investigated.\u201d<br \/>\nProfessor Rowley and his team are\u00a0part of URI\u2019s\u00a0<strong><a title=\"Link to homepage story on the URI Natural Products Group\" href=\"http:\/\/ww2.uri.edu\/big-stories\/discover-the-healing-power-of-the-sea\">Natural Products Group<\/a><\/strong>, the premier natural products research group in the Northeast with the largest number of pharmacognosy researchers in the area. The Natural Products Group works on projects with a growing number of companies and with other scientists at URI and other institutions. For example,\u00a0<strong>Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.<\/strong>\u00a0has funded the Professor Rowley\u2019s research on the beneficial agents found in cranberries, and the\u00a0<strong>Rhode Island Sea Grant<\/strong>\u00a0is supporting his research on the chemistry of bacteria that promote disease-resistance in oysters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Title: Associate Professor, Biomedical Sciences Expertise: Microorganisms from unexplored environments; secondary metabolites produced by marine microbes; bacterial chemical communication; and antibiotic drug discovery One of the more frightening medical trends today is our growing resistance to antibiotics, which we take for everything from ear infections to life-threatening blood conditions. As people use antibiotics for more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":639,"featured_media":11585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[191],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-people-rowley"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/639"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/pharmacy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}