Antibiotics: Solving the crisis

Professor Michael Barrett, University of Glasgow, UK

2021 was the 80th anniversary of the first administration of penicillin to a patient: Constable Albert Alexander in the UK in Feb 1941. The World Congress offers an appropriate opportunity to showcase contemporary antibiotics research. Penicillin was discovered by a Scotsman, Alexander Fleming, who hailed from a Village just 20 miles south of Glasgow (the location of the World Congress).

The discovery of penicillin inspired a golden age of antibiotic discovery and transformed human health, offering a future potentially free of bacterial disease which had, previously, been a leading cause of human death. By the twenty first Century, however, the tide was turning. Resistance to antimicrobials was growing and efforts to develop new antibiotics had stalled
A risk of returning to a pre-antibiotic age has been identified and efforts to renew antibiotic discovery are increasingly urgent. This symposium, linked to the keynote presentation from professor dame Sally Davies, will showcase a range of new approaches to antibiotic discovery from leading researchers in the UK and internationally, covering academia, industry and the public-private partnership sector.

One Health approaches to tackling antimicrobial resistance
Professor Mark Woolhouse
Edinburgh University, UK

GARDP: Global solutions to the antimicrobial crisis
Professor Laura Piddock
Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP), Switzerland

Antimicrobial resistance: innovation can avert the silent pandemic, but can we sustain it?
Professor Manos Perros
ENTASIS Therapeutics, Boston, USA

Recent Advances in Antimicrobial Drug Discovery
Dr Rebecca McHugh
University of Glasgow, UK