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UCL Antimicrobial Resistance

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Developing and testing therapies

New antibiotics are urgently needed to treat antibiotic-resistant infections - but there could also be a place for alternative therapeutic strategies.

Escherichia coli

Basic research can identify possible targets for new chemo-therapeutics, and natural products may also be an important source of new antimicrobial agents.

An alternative approach is to focus on the host. For example, it may be possible to treat bacteria so they are made more susceptible to natural host defences, or to use agents that boost host defence responses and can be used in conjunction with antibiotics.

For a disease like TB, although effective treatments exist, they are long and arduous. There is a continuing need to test new treatment regimes that are easier to follow or require less time to complete.