Slava Epstein

A sponge is the perfect environment to host various types of bacteria, study says

The results provide an understanding of the microbial point of view where “distances and spaces are dramatically different” from a human’s point of view, said Slava Epstein, a professor of microbiology at Northeastern University, who was not involved with the study. By studying the distance between cells, which is measured in microns, researchers are better […]

Science Magazine

New ‘reverse genomics’ method brings previously hidden bacteria to life

Although other groups recently have reported other techniques that isolate and grow novel microbes starting from sequences, Slava Epstein, a microbiologist at Northeastern University in Boston who specializes in cultivating previously uncultivable organisms, says this new work stands apart. “Their approach is targeted, and all the others rely on statistics,” Epstein says. “That’s a new […]

PBS NewsHour

Drug companies aren’t making new antibiotics. Is there an economic cure?

As drug-resistant infections proliferate, financial barriers are preventing the pharmaceutical industry from investing in new drugs to fight off superbugs. Economics correspondent Paul Solman, in a series of reports with science correspondent Miles O’Brien, explores how researchers, including Northeastern professor Slava Epstein, could be incentivized to develop new antibiotics.

PBS NewsHour

The financial barrier to developing antibiotics? No big payday for drug companies

Northeastern University professor Slava Epstein joins PBS NewsHour to discuss the hunt for new drugs, and why the market for creating them has just about collapsed.

The New Yorker

The unseen

Once a year, when Slava Epstein was growing up in Moscow, his mother took him to the Exhibition of the Achievements of the National Economy, a showcase for the wonders of Soviet life. The expo featured many things—from industrial harvesters to Uzbek wine—but Epstein, who began going in the nineteen-sixties, when he was eight or […]

The Verge

New method for building antibiotics could produce ‘thousands’ of drug candidates

Kim Lewis, director of the antimicrobial discovery center at Northeastern University, also questions the utility of these compounds in overcoming antibiotic resistance. The best way to avoid resistance is to create entirely new kinds of antibiotics, he says. However, in this case, the method yields variants of macrolides, which might be useful for medicine in […]

A radically simple idea may open the door to a new world of antibiotics

Slava Epstein works in aggressively low-tech quarters at Northeastern University. You might expect otherwise, given the extraordinary work that he and his colleagues are doing, discovering new kinds of antibiotics that are fundamentally different than the ones doctors prescribe today. And yet, when I paid Epstein a visit recently, we sat down amid a veritable […]

The Scientist

Lost colonies

“It’s a significant intellectual teaser,” says Slava Epstein, a microbial ecologist at Northeastern University in Boston, “why, after 150 years of the sweat and blood of smart, talented people, we can cultivate only a small proportion of microbes.”  

Science Magazine

The drug push

This past January, microbiologists Kim Lewis and Slava Epstein reported the discovery of teixobactin, a compound that in lab dishes kills several antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Media outlets heralded the discovery, announced in Nature, as a new solution to the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance. A White House press release mentioned teixobactin, which Lewis and […]

Antibiotic discovery: Soil secrets

Researchers in Boston have made a literally ground-breaking discovery, which could lead to the development of a new generation of antibiotics. The BBC’s Fergus Walsh has been talking to members of the team at Northeastern University, who are creating new drugs by cultivating individual bacterial cells from samples of ordinary soil.