Digging deep for antibiotic discovery
Meet the UQ scientists inviting everyday Queenslanders to get their hands dirty to unearth the next generation of antibiotics.
Drug-resistant infections threaten to cause 10 million deaths annually by 2050 – or about one person every three seconds. Despite this, the development rate of new antibiotics has not kept pace.
Professor Ian Henderson, Director of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) at The University of Queensland (UQ), said this shocking death rate would see more people dying from drug-resistant infections than from cancer.
“The basis of all modern medicine is reliant on access to effective antibiotics. Without them, we lose the capacity to perform much of what we take for granted: for example, most surgery would cease because the risk of post-operative infection would be too high and chemotherapy treatment would be far too risky,” Professor Henderson explained.
Queenslanders are being asked to 'dig deep' in an Australian-first project, with the next 'ground-breaking' medicine potentially hiding in their backyard.
“The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and fungus – so-called ‘superbugs’ – has the potential to set medicine back almost 100 years to a pre-penicillin-era if we don’t take drastic action.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security and development today.
To help prevent this global health crisis, a team of scientists from IMB have launched an Australian-first citizen science project, Soils for Science.
Image: Soils for Science / Institute for Molecular Bioscience, UQ
Image: Soils for Science / Institute for Molecular Bioscience, UQ
IMB Professorial Research Fellow Rob Capon explained that the project invites Queenslanders to collect soil samples from across the state for researchers to analyse for vital leads to new life-saving medications.
“Queensland is one of the most biodiverse environments in the world – spanning beaches, rainforests, wetlands and deserts. This vast, untapped landscape is ripe for the discovery of microbes that could be developed into new antibiotics, anti-fungals and other medicines.”
Image: Soils for Science / Institute for Molecular Bioscience, UQ
“No one has looked at Queensland in this way before. Soils for Science is the only initiative exploring and analysing the state’s microbial bounty on this scale, which is going to work to our advantage."
The program plans to harness the microbial diversity of the state to first address antibiotics, and will then broaden out to address all sorts of other important diseases.
To fast-track the discovery of new antibiotics, Project Manager Doctor Zeinab Khalil said that they hope to work hand-in-hand with Queenslanders to collect 100,000 soil samples.
Vivid, high-resolution photographs of each magnified microbial sample will be posted online to give volunteers a close-up view of the micro-organisms growing in their own backyard.
“Our goal is to assemble a living library of more than two million microbes, which we will make freely available to the medical and research communities to develop new medicines.”
“I am so excited to engage the community in this project, to show them what IMB – and science in general – is capable of achieving and hopefully, to discover new drugs that save lives.”
Image: Soils for Science / Institute for Molecular Bioscience, UQ
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