CO-ADD Sparks Up the Hunt for New Antibiotics

It’s World Antimicrobial Awareness Week 2021 and we are shining a light on Australia’s expertise and innovations to fight antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and superbugs. Joining our podcast host Caroline Duell is MTPConnect’s Director of Stakeholder Engagement for Queensland Andrew Bowskill, who is the co-chair of AAMRNet, Australia’s first industry led, multi-stakeholder Antimicrobial Resistance Network, established and operated by MTPConnect.We hear from Dr Mark Blaskovich, Associate Professor, The University of Queensland; Director, Centre for Superbug Solutions at the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) and co-founder of the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery (CO-ADD) at The University of Queensland.  And Dr Alysha Elliott, IMB Research Officer and part of the Cooper Group involved in translation of research for antibacterial drug discovery who leads the CO-ADD microbial team in screening compounds from all over the world to search for the next new antibiotic.Find out more about CO-ADD's global screening initiative,  the challenges of antimicrobial drug discovery, why AMR is a global health threat and how support from CARB-X and other collaborative efforts like the SPARK data sharing initiative is helping to further critical research into finding new antimicrobials, fighting the threat of AMR and the rise of superbugs. This is the first of four episodes specially programmed to coincide with WAAW!