• Question: Do you have any ideas on combating antibiotic resistance?

    Asked by anon-196477 to Lee on 4 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Lee Steinberg

      Lee Steinberg answered on 4 Mar 2019:

      I think that there are a few things we need to be doing better:
      – When people are given a course of antibiotics, they need to be finishing the entire course. People often stop taking them when they feel better – this can lead to stronger resistance.
      – We need to find new methods of action for antibiotics. A lot of antibiotics work in similar ways – for example destroying the cell membrane of bacteria by targeting a particular protein. We need to find new ways of targeting the bacteria!

      Antibiotic resistance is one of the great challenges facing modern drug discovery. Thankfully we have a lot of good scientists working on this!

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