Scientists in landmark bid to tackle growing threat from infectious diseases

new treatments to tackle infectious diseases will be explored in an ambitious £6 million international project by scientists in Yorkshire unveiled today.

Innovative technology will be harnessed to help experts at Sheffield University in two projects announced at a major conference in Tokyo where the institution is looking to attract international partners.

The work comes 70 years after Sir Howard Florey carried out the first-ever clinical trials at the university of penicillin, which has gone on to save more than 82 million lives worldwide.

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One initiative will harness the development of state-of-the-art microscopic imaging to help scientists gain new insight at resolutions never previously possible.

Project director Prof Simon Foster said: “A big challenge, particularly in microscopy is resolution – our ability to see very small objects. With an organism like MRSA, an infectious agent that is very small, until now the current technology has only been able to show where molecules are inside a cell but has not been able to properly localise them or to look at their dynamics.

“When you understand the life of that organism then you have the capabilities of actually determining and developing new drugs which are able to inhibit those life giving processes and therefore you have new antibiotics.”

In a second initiative, world-leading scientists at the university’s Florey Institute will look for life-saving advances in treatment and preventative therapy by better understanding the links between bacteria and immune systems, focusing on two big bacterial killers pneumonia and another responsible for the superbug MRSA.

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Prof Richard Jones, pro-vice-chancellor of research and innovation, said: “We have forgotten what it is like to be under constant threat of infectious diseases, but this is something we are seeing more and more as we are finding that the pathogens that cause diseases are becoming resistant to antibiotics.”

Moira Whyte, head of the university’s department of infection and immunity, said: “As a clinician, my ultimate goal has to be to make a difference to patients.

“I think a huge achievement of this centre would be if we look back in 10 years’ time and say that what we discovered, what we developed and took forward into the clinic, has actually changed the way that we treat patients with infections.”

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