Tim Bugni

About

Tim S. Bugni, PhD, is a professor at the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he is part of the Pharmaceutical Sciences Division. His research interests include marine natural products chemistry, symbiotic microorganisms, drug discovery, metabolomics, and the use of NMR and MS for structure elucidation of novel natural products. His work focuses on exploring under-explored niches for bacterial cultivation, particularly from marine invertebrates such as sponges and ascidians, to discover new therapeutics. He employs metabolomics approaches to prioritize promising strains for the discovery of natural products with potential applications in neurodegenerative disease, infectious disease, and cancer. The overarching goal of his research is to develop diverse natural product libraries from unique microbes for drug discovery, facilitating the identification of novel therapeutic leads and the development of chemical probes for cellular function investigation. Dr. Bugni received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Montana Tech in 1995 and his PhD from the University of Utah in 2003. He held a postdoctoral appointment at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and was a research assistant professor at the University of Utah before joining the faculty at the School of Pharmacy in 2009.

Research topics

• Biology
• Computational biology
• Biochemistry
• Computer Science
• Genetics
• Chemistry
• Ecology
• Stereochemistry
• Bioinformatics
• Botany

Selected publications

• A marine microbiome antifungal targets urgent-threat drug-resistant fungi

  Science · 2020 · 172 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Leveraging the microbiomes of marine animals and cutting-edge metabolomics and genomic tools, we identified encouraging lead antifungal molecules with in vivo efficacy. The most promising lead, turbinmicin, displays potent in vitro and mouse-model efficacy toward multiple-drug-resistant fungal pathogens, exhibits a wide safety index, and functions through a fungal-specific mode of action, targeting Sec14 of the vesicular trafficking pathway. The efficacy, safety, and mode of action distinct from…

  DOI

• A community resource for paired genomic and metabolomic data mining

  Nature Chemical Biology · 2021 · 129 citations

  biosynthetic origins and metabolite structures.

  DOI

• Chromosomal instability sensitizes patient breast tumors to multipolar divisions induced by paclitaxel

  Science Translational Medicine · 2021 · 128 citations

  Paclitaxel (Taxol) is a cornerstone of cancer treatment. However, its mechanism of cytotoxicity is incompletely understood and not all patients benefit from treatment. We show that patients with breast cancer did not accumulate sufficient intratumoral paclitaxel to induce mitotic arrest in tumor cells. Instead, clinically relevant concentrations induced multipolar mitotic spindle formation. However, the extent of early multipolarity did not predict patient response. Whereas multipolar divisions…

  DOI

• Metabolomics and Genomics Enable the Discovery of a New Class of Nonribosomal Peptidic Metallophores from a Marine <i>Micromonospora</i>

  Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2022 · 34 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  ) biosynthetic gene cluster and stable isotope-feeding experiments helped illuminate the novel enzymology driving ecteinamine assembly as well the role of cluster collaborations or "duets" in producing such structurally complex agents. Finally, ecteinamines were found to bind nickel, cobalt, zinc, and copper, suggesting a possible biological role as broad-spectrum metallophores.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bacillibactins E and F from a Marine Sponge-Associated <i>Bacillus</i> sp.

  Journal of Natural Products · 2020 · 24 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  .

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant P41RR002301

  NIH · $6.0M · 2015

• Cancer Center Administration

  NIH · $99.8M · 1997–2028

• Mode of Action Core

  NIH · $61.7M · 2019–2025

Frequent coauthors

• Chris M. Ireland

  University of Utah

  75 shared

• Mary Kay Harper

  University of Utah

  45 shared

• Thomas P. Wyche

  Quantitative BioSciences

  44 shared

• Scott R. Rajski

  41 shared

• Doug R. Braun

  35 shared

• Cameron R. Currie

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  33 shared

• Yanpeng Hou

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  31 shared

• Gisela P. Concepción

  24 shared

Labs

• Bugni Research GroupPI

Education

• Ph.D., Pharmaceutical Sciences

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

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