Progress in fighting antibiotic resistance

Mat Upton, one of our lecturers, writes "Antibiotic resistance is very newsworthy at the moment (have you been listening to Val McDermid’s Dangerous visions: Resistance on Radio 4?!). This really is a genuine threat to human health and could undermine all of modern medicine. There are many ways we can help to reduce the impact of antibiotic resistance, or drug resistant infections - discovery of new antibiotics is just one aspect. In my group, we are working to develop new ways of preventing and treating infections caused by MRSA, often called a superbug in the news. Our latest paper reports that a single dose of our lead antibiotic is as effective as 6 doses of the current standard treatment in an animal model of MRSA infection. This is the first report of single dose efficacy in this infection model and could lead to shorter therapies in humans. We now hope to secure funding to take the antibiotic into pre-clinical toxicity testing and phase 1 clinical trials."