One of our lecturers, Mat Upton, has been awarded £217,00 as Lead Academic on an Innovate UK/BBSRC award to help develop new antibiotics. The aim is to make a fermentation system to produce commercially viable amounts of the lead antibiotic, epidermicin, which could be a new therapy for MRSA infection. This is a collaborative project with the industrial biotechnology company Ingenza (Edinburgh).
The project is part of a larger programme of research by Mat into a new class of antibiotics called bacteriocins - antimicrobial peptides produced by bacteria to kill other bacteria. Epidermicin is a potent and novel bacteriocin that he and collaborators have shown to out perform current therapies in a model system. The new funding will help progress epidermicin towards clinical trials by demonstrating that it can be cost-effectively produced in large amounts.
The project is part of a larger programme of research by Mat into a new class of antibiotics called bacteriocins - antimicrobial peptides produced by bacteria to kill other bacteria. Epidermicin is a potent and novel bacteriocin that he and collaborators have shown to out perform current therapies in a model system. The new funding will help progress epidermicin towards clinical trials by demonstrating that it can be cost-effectively produced in large amounts.
