In 2022, we funded Dr Simon Moore's project 'A cell-free biosensor method to detect novel antibiotics for Gram-negative bacteria'. Read about his findings:
Antibiotic discovery – a new (but old) gold rush for the 21st century
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a significant public health threat that is projected to cause more deaths worldwide than cancer by 2050. This phenomenon occurs when bacteria develop the ability to survive exposure to antibiotics, leading to the ineffectiveness of these drugs in treating infectious diseases. In order to effectively combat AMR, it is important that we learn from the past and understand the underlying mechanisms of this phenomenon. In the 1940s to 1960s, Professor Selman Waksman (1952 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine) and his team at Rutgers University inspired a great search for antibiotics from environmental microbes, leading to the discovery of many life-saving drugs such as streptomycin. However, the depletion of the most accessible sources of these drugs, much like surface deposits in a gold rush, has made the search for new antibiotics all the more crucial. As we continue this hunt, it is also essential that we study the mechanisms of AMR in order to develop drugs that can effectively evade resistance.
The next "gold rush" of antibiotic discovery may not necessarily be a new source of these drugs, but new targets to disrupt within bacteria and other microbial infectious diseases. In the summer of 2022, the Biochemical Society supported a project to develop a new method for detecting a potential novel source of antibiotics through the Eric Reid Fund for Methodology. The project was led by Mr Guy Griffin, who worked in the laboratory of Dr Simon Moore at the University of Kent. The Moore group is focused on the field of synthetic biology for natural products and is actively working towards discovering untapped sources of antibiotics. During this time, Guy specifically developed a fluorescence methodology (see image) that allows for the real-time sensing of how energy processes – an understudied target for antibiotics – takes place inside bacteria. We anticipate Guy’s early findings could potentially open a new target for antibiotic discovery. The Moore group has since relocated to Queen Mary University of London, to continue this research line, and would like to thank the Biochemical Society for their support and training of Mr Griffin.