Natural Product Antibiotics for multi-drug resistant pathogens

Antimicrobial resistance is regarded by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as one of the greatest threats to the human race. Several multi-drug-resistant strains are becoming untreatable, and due to the long development times there is an urgent need to accelerate research into new therapies. Unfortunately, many pharmaceutical companies have abandoned their antibiotic programmes, and the number of new antibiotic compounds in development is diminishing.
Demuris has screened several thousand rare and diverse antibiotic producing bacteria and several novel antibiotics have been identified which target problem multi-drug resistant pathogens. Demuris must now obtain enough antibiotic material for structure characterisation and perform the following experiments to generate a data package which will identify any potential toxicity. This project will show whether these compounds have the key properties needed for antibiotics of the future.