Antibiotic resistance: ‘Help us fight the superbugs’

The public is being urged to support a new fundraising appeal to raise funds to test pioneering drug combinations to tackle antibiotic resistant superbugs.
David Cameron has warned that the world could be soon "cast back into the dark ages of medicine" unless a solution is found to antibiotic resistance.David Cameron has warned that the world could be soon "cast back into the dark ages of medicine" unless a solution is found to antibiotic resistance.
David Cameron has warned that the world could be soon "cast back into the dark ages of medicine" unless a solution is found to antibiotic resistance.

York-based Antibiotic Research UK says that for a “few hundred thousand pounds, tens of millions of lives could be saved.”

The charity, which was set up last year, is tying to find new solutions to the most dangerous bacteria called Gram-negatives, including E. coli, which the UK’s chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies has warned could “finish” modern medicine.

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Dr David Brown, former research director of Roche Pharmaceuticals, who is chairing its science and technical advisory committee, will announce its first research programme - which needs £120,000 funding - at its annual general meeting in York today.

It follows warnings that in the next 20 years even minor surgery and routine operations could become “high-risk.” The annual National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies said much of modern medicine - organ transplants, bowel surgery and some cancer treatments, may become “unsafe” due to the increased risk of infection.

Dr Brown said in countries like India there was already only a 50/50 chance of whether antibiotics would work: “It is going to get scary here in maybe 10 years time. There will be outbreaks periodically that will be quite frightening. We are very fortunate to have some of the best scientists in the world in this country, but we can’t be immune, because people travel and there will be outbreaks that will be difficult to control.”

For the past year Dr Brown and colleagues, who include some of the UK’s top antibiotic resistance researchers, have been reviewing global scientific literature to examine what existing drugs could be used in tandem with existing antibiotics, as so-called antibiotic resistance breakers, to boost their efficacy.

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It means drugs commonly used to treat heart disease, arthritis and psychiatric disorders could in future be prescribed alongside antibiotics.

Dr Brown said there were 1,000 to 2,000 current drugs worth looking at and they would be validated through repeat experiments, which could be done quickly and efficiently using robot systems in laboratories.

He said: “I would say the gain for humanity is very large against the very small amount of money which is needed For just a few hundred thousand pounds we can save tens of millions of lives.

“If any of them do work we will have to take them through clinical development work which will cost millions but at the point we can go to much bigger funders, the Government and research councils.

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“But we need this initial money to prove that we have some very strong possibilities.”

Professor Colin Garner, the charity’s chief executive, said it was an exciting opportunity: “The advantage of the approach is that it is faster and cheaper than trying to find a new antibiotic from scratch. We need the public to help us fund this programme which we anticipate will start in early 2016.”

Visit www.antibioticresearch.org.uk.