Windfall will help university develop new antibiotics

Dundee University has been awarded almost £1 million to battle antimicrobial resistance.

Described as one of the greatest threats to global human and animal health, antimicrobial resistance could be directly responsible for more than 10 million deaths by 2050 – more than cancer, diabetes, road traffic accidents and cholera combined.

A crucial part of the solution is to find new antibiotics to tackle bacterial infections and replace existing treatments which have become ineffective, often through overuse.

Dundee University will use the grant from Innovate UK to find new drugs, creating an antibacterial drug discovery accelerator and further build on the world-leading work carried out in its drug discovery unit.

Professor Mike Ferguson, regius professor of life sciences at the university, said: “This award will help us address one of the fundamental needs in tackling antimicrobial resistance – the creation of new antibacterial drugs.

“We have considerable infrastructure and expertise in drug discovery at Dundee.

“This award will enable us to build on that and significantly boost our work on bacterial diseases, where drug-resistant infections are threatening all countries and adversely impacting the clinical management of patients.”

Professor Ian Gilbert, head of chemistry at the drug discovery unit, leads the team who in 2015 discovered a compound with the potential to treat malaria.

He added: “We already have a wide-ranging programme of anti-infectives drug discovery which is producing promising leads for diseases including malaria, leishmaniasis and tuberculosis.”