No new classes of antibiotics have been discovered since the 1980s. Discovering and developing genuinely new antibiotics is challenging. The science is rigorous, and the research and development process is time-consuming and expensive, and often fails.
However, creating new antibiotics is essential to replenish the clinical pipeline of new medicine. Researchers at the University of Oxford are trialling new combinations of antibiotics that avoid resistance mechanisms. Alternative therapies are also explored, through probiotics, phage therapy and vaccine development.
Current projects
Antibiotic drug discovery and development
Researchers pioneer new approaches to the design of new antibiotics to be used in human medicine. The team target multi-drug resistant (MDR) Enterobacterales, including those resistant to carbapenem, colistin and tigecycline antibiotics.
Bacteriophages
Researchers at Ineos Oxford Institute are developing methods to use phages as biocontrol agents to prevent the transmission of drug-resistant bacteria in different environments such as hospitals and farms.
Beyond Antibiotics
The programme focuses on alternatives to antibiotic treatments, including development of human organoid models, microscopy techniques to study such models and 'drug-free' antibiotic treatments.
CMD Medicinal Chemistry
The Medicinal Chemistry group at the Centre for Medicine's Discovery work to select druggable targets, and discover and optimise small molecule leads.
Gonococcal Vaccine Project
The project uses native outer membrane vesicle (nOMV) technology to develop a candidate vaccine against gonococcus, GonoVac, to meet the pressing need for a gonococcal vaccine.
Macrophages, inflammation and drug development
The lab studies the role of innate immune cells called macrophages in the process of inflammation. They want to use our knowledge of macrophage cell biology to develop new anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial drugs.
Medicinal chemistry and chemical biology
The group focus on the development of molecules to slow and/or reverse the emergence of antimicrobial resistance. The team uses interdisciplinary chemical biology to identify new drug targets and develop inhibitors with novel mechanisms of action.
Membrane protein structural and chemical biology
The Sauer group's work focuses on structural biology and biochemistry of membrane transporters. Our team also develops resources and methods for studying these proteins and identifying new therapeutics.
Protein transport across bacterial cell membranes
The group study the molecular machines involved in forming the bacteria cell envelope, including those that transport macromolecules across cell membranes. These nanomachines have crucial roles in pathogenesis, motility, and antibiotic resistance.
Protein-protein interactions in bacterial cell envelope
The group aim to understand how protein-protein interactions in bacteria help support the organisation, structure and stability of the outer membrane and how such interactions can also be exploited by protein antibiotics, known as bacteriocins, to kill bacterial cells.