Research aids fight against treatment-resistant superbugs

Researchers at Simon Fraser University are studying the genes of superbugs to aid the development of new and effective treatments for drug-resistant bacterial infections. Superbugs are characterized as infection-causing bacteria resistant to treatment with antibiotics. -Antimicrobial resistance occurs when the disease-causing bacteria has ways to overcome the antibiotics that we use in treatment for infections,- says assistant professor Amy Lee, of SFU's Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. The initiative is a collaboration between the Lee Lab and Brinkman Lab , which are working together as part of the interdisciplinary SFU Omics Data Science Initiative (OSDI) . -Our lab tries to understand how bacteria develop resistance because that makes the drug ineffective,- says Lee. Their review of work to identify pathogen-associated genes in various disease-causing bacteria and develop new antivirulence drug treatments has been published in eBioMedicine , part of The Lancet's Discovery Science . Antibiotic or antimicrobial resistance has been named a top global health threat by the World Health Organization (WHO).