11 Sep 2018
BioCurate grant a boost for antibiotic discovery
Dr Glen Carter from the Microbiological Diagnostic Unit Public Health Laboratory is on the verge of discovering a novel class of antibiotics and a recent funding boost has taken the project one step closer.
BioCurate, a joint venture of the University of Melbourne and Monash University, established to address the key challenges in early stage drug development, announced Dr Carter and his collaborator, Professor Jonathan Baell from Monash Institute for Pharmaceutical Sciences, are recipients of one of its inaugural investment projects.
Dr Carter and Professor Baell started their project a couple of years ago, trying to develop antibiotics that target gut pathogens such as vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus and Clostridium difficile, typically hospital-acquired infections.
“Traditionally, most antibiotics don’t target the gut well, we have been able to develop new gut targeted antibiotics that we have shown to perform well in vitro,” Dr Carter said.
“They kill faster and more effectively than current last line antibiotics, which hopefully will make them efficacious in treating these multiply drug resistant hospital pathogens.”
Dr Carter said there is an urgent need for new antibiotics with antibiotic resistance emerging and a lot of hospital-acquired infections on their last line of drugs.
“The BioCurate funding goes a long way in bridging the gap between lab research and clinical outcomes, and really helps academic groups, like ours push these important projects to the next level.”
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