Uni to combat superbugs with new antibiotics

Warwick researchers are leading the UK side of a $3.4 million project into combating superbugs.

Warwick University is one of eight British and Canadian universities, including Sheffield, Birmingham, and Newcastle, who will be teaming up over the next four years in order to search for new targets for antibiotics that are currently not effective in treating superbugs such as E. coli and MRSA.

Superbugs are caused when bacteria mutate to resist drugs and are resistant to a multitude of antibiotics, rendering them increasingly difficult to treat, as the bugs pass on their resistance. This is the reason why a new influenza vaccination is needed every year.

In recent years we have seen a huge increase in the number of superbug epidemics in the UK, caused by our increased use of antibiotics in treatment, as well as lower levels of approved drugs to combat them. Greater antibiotic resistance leads to an even greater need to find alternatives to current treatments.

The project is being funded by a collaboration between the UK’s Medical Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Canada/UK Partnership on Antibiotic Resistance. In addition, the research due to take place at the University of Warwick will benefit from equipment provided by the Advantage West Midlands’ Birmingham Science City.

Warwick, which was responsible for developing the project, will be leading the project in the UK with scientists from the School of Life Sciences, Professor Chris Dowson and Dr David Roper.

In particular, it will be focusing on researching to increase scientific understanding of bacterial cell wall growth as a means of finding new ways of targeting antibiotics at the superbugs.

Target sites are responsible for the immunity of MRSA to penicillin as they alter the site at which it binds and so decrease the drug’s effectiveness.

“Growing antibiotic resistance to the current generation of antibiotics is of huge concern worldwide. Antibiotics underpin many aspects of healthcare – from cancer treatment through to surgery – but the pace of antibiotic resistance in some bacteria is speeding up.

“Coupled with that, there is a worrying lack of new antibiotic drugs coming through the pipeline from private drug companies. That’s why public funding for projects like this is so vital,” said Professor Chris Dowson.

“Governments need to take responsibility for funding early-stage drug discovery, as we face an increasing vacuum of antibiotic research within the pharmaceutical industry.”

Dr David Roper is co-director of the project in the UK. He said: “Researchers on both sides of the Atlantic will be working in teams together exploring and exploiting aspects of the way in which bacteria synthesise their cell walls as they grow.

“Many current antibiotics, including penicillin, target this process and we think there are many new aspects to exploit, if we understood the process better. Our coordinated research efforts will be to further define the biological elements of how bacteria build their cell walls and discover new chemicals that interfere with that process.

“Research teams in Canada and the UK have unique facilities and expertise to do this and for the first time funding from MRC and CIHR is being used to combine those assets.”