2026 Bailey Award to support research into new antibiotic class

The Bailey Research Career Development Award is Iowa State University’s annual investment in bold, innovative early-career researchers. This year, the award is powering Brett VanVeller, associate professor of chemistry, and his lab’s research into unlocking bottromycin, a relatively rare antibiotic with a unique mechanism that could outsmart resistant bacteria.

“Antibiotic discovery is high-risk because nature doesn’t give up these molecules easily, and making them in the lab is often exceptionally challenging,” explained VanVeller. “The Bailey Award gives us the runway to solve those hard synthetic problems and see whether a new antibiotic class is really possible.”

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the greatest global health threats of our time, projected by the World Health Organization (WHO) to surpass cancer as the leading cause of death by 2050. Bottromycin stands out because it disables bacterial protein synthesis in a way no current drug does, making it a promising candidate against multidrug-resistant pathogens. Yet, its development has stalled for decades due to its complex structure and scarcity from natural sources.

VanVeller’s project tackles this challenge head-on by creating a modular synthetic platform using solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS), the same automated technology that enabled the development of other peptide-based therapeutics like semaglutide for Type 2 diabetes and obesity and enfuvirtide for the treatment of HIV. If successful, VanVeller’s innovation will make bottromycin and its analogs efficiently accessible for the first time, enabling systematic exploration of their structure and function.

“The Bailey Award provides our researchers the freedom to explore transformative ideas that can define their research careers,” said Peter Dorhout, vice president for research at Iowa State. “Dr. VanVeller is opening doors to an entirely new class of antibiotics at a time when the world urgently needs them. We’re proud to support research with the potential to make such a profound impact on human health.”

The timing of the award occurs at a pivotal moment. A research group at the University of Illinois Chicago recently uncovered the long-elusive mechanism of action behind bottromycin—finally explaining how the molecule works after decades of uncertainty. Crucially, this discovery coincided with VanVeller’s own development of an efficient way to synthesize bottromycin.

Together, these two advances create an unprecedented opportunity not only to study bottromycin in depth but also to redesign it in ways that could expand its therapeutic potential. Beyond antibiotic development, VenVeller’s work could transform bottromycin into a powerful biochemical tool for studying protein synthesis, opening new doors in molecular biology.

“At the end of the day, I’m an organic chemist because I love molecular design. I love thinking about how positioning atoms in space confers properties that we can explain, rationalize, and design,” added VanVeller. “And bottromycin is finally within reach. If you have synthetic methods that can access all parts of the structure, we can design certain aspects, change how it targets, and expand the set of targets it can hit. When you design a molecule and it works as designed, that’s just a thrilling experience.”

The Bailey Research Career Development Award provides $150,000 over three years to support early-career faculty pursuing high-risk, high-reward research. It is named after Carl A. and Grace A. Bailey who established the award through a generous estate gift. Past recipients have advanced fields from maternal health to pollinator conservation.