First results of Antibiotic Research UK funded science programmes presented at 2019 ECCMID in Amsterdam

Alison Staples ANTRUK announcements, Research

Scientific progress often appears to  move at a snail’s pace owing to the rigorous design of experiments and repetition of findings. We were delighted therefore when the results of two of our research programmes which we supported were presented as posters at the 2019 European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Poster 1 was presented by Dr Charlotte Hind, Senior Research Scientist at Public Health England and summarised the findings of a large scale screening study on Antibiotic Resistance Breakers in four species of antibiotic resistant Gram-negative bacteria. The molecules studied were all from a commercially available library of pharmaceutical drugs. Out of some 1300 drug molecules screened hits included antimetabolites, anthracyclines, psychoactive drugs and antiseptics. A copy of the presented poster can be found HERE.

Poster 2 was presented by Drs David Wareham and Mike Hornsey of the Blizard Institute, Queen Mary’s, University of London about their research into exploring different combinations of carbapenem antibiotics with different β-lactamase inhibitors (BLMIs). β-lactamase is the bacterial enzyme responsible for breaking down penicillin like antibiotics and is one cause of antibiotic resistance. BLMIs can restore the activity of this antibiotic class. This ANTRUK supported programme found that a combination of the carbapenem antibiotic cefepime together with the BLMI sulbactam had novel activity against a number of Gram-negative species. A copy of the presented poster can be found HERE.

These two research programmes represent close to £250,000 of research funding. We aim to further explore these findings but we cannot do so without funding. Please help us in our ongoing programmes by making a donation however large or small. Click HERE to donate.