Fight Against Treatment-Resistant Superbugs
Published:19 Apr.2023 Source:Simon Fraser University
Researchers at Simon Fraser University are studying the genes of superbugs to aid the development of new and effective treatments for drug-resistant bacterial infections. Superbugs are characterized as infection-causing bacteria resistant to treatment with antibiotics.
"Antimicrobial resistance occurs when the disease-causing bacteria has ways to overcome the antibiotics that we use in treatment for infections," says assistant professor Amy Lee, of SFU's Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. The initiative is a collaboration between the Lee Lab and Brinkman Lab, which are working together as part of the interdisciplinary SFU Omics Data Science Initiative (OSDI). "Our lab tries to understand how bacteria develop resistance because that makes the drug ineffective," says Lee.
Their review of work to identify pathogen-associated genes in various disease-causing bacteria and develop new antivirulence drug treatments has been published in eBioMedicine, part of The Lancet's Discovery Science.
Antibiotic or antimicrobial resistance has been named a top global health threat by the World Health Organization (WHO).