About us

Antimicrobials are a special category of drug that underpin modern medicine as we know it. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is therefore recognised as a global crisis in healthcare, but the rate of discovery and development of new antibiotics remains low. 

Currently, around 1.2 million people die every year from antibiotic resistant infections (Murray, 2022). If resistance to anti-microbials is left unchecked, it has been estimated that by 2050, more than 10 million people will die annually due to infection by resistant organsims  – more than deaths due to cancer and diabetes combined (O’Niell, 2016). The development of new therapies against cancer and diabetes is very well supported globally by big pharmaceutical companies, but this is not the case for antibiotic development, as the commercial return on the development of new antibiotics is unattractive, resulting in a market failure to develop new antibiotics (O’Niell, 2016). This has left a research void that is reliant on smaller University-led research to counter AMR.  

Our centre aims to tackle the growing global burden of antimicrobial resistance by bringing together national and international scientists in the fields of synthetic chemistry, structural and molecular biology, bacterial cell biology, bioinformatics, as well as infectious disease clinicians. We are housed in the School of Biological Sciences at the Faculty of Science under the leadership of Dr Ghader Bashiri.