The Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery (CO-ADD) is a not-for-profit initiative created in 2015 reaching out to chemists in academia and research organisations who have compounds that were not designed as antibiotics and would not otherwise be screened for antimicrobial activity. These academic compounds are screened against a key panel of drug-resistant bacterial strains -superbugs. Multi-drug resistant microbes are a serious health treat, and exploration of novel chemical diversity is essential to find new antibiotics. [1] [2] [3] [4]
CO-ADD's goal is to find new, diverse compounds to combat the superbug crisis in screening chemical compounds for antimicrobial activity against key ESKAPE pathogens, E. coli, K. pneumoniae, A. baumannii, P. aeruginosa, S. aureus (MRSA), as well as the fungi C. neoformans and C. albicans.
CO-ADD is supported by the Wellcome Trust through a Strategic Award and The University of Queensland (Institute for Molecular Bioscience), where the compound screening facilities are located.
Community
editCO-ADD is a community-driven solution to the superbug crisis problem, providing chemists with:[citation needed]
- an open access antimicrobial drug discovery platform
- a low-barrier access to free antimicrobial screening
- a program to uncover and test chemical diversity sitting on chemists’ shelves
- a communal knowledge base for antimicrobial discovery
The Superbug Crisis
editResistance of bacteria to commonly used antibiotics is increasing and contributes significantly to patient morbidity and mortality. Klebsiella species, Acinetobacter baumannii, P. aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species, together with the gram-positive Enterococcus faecium and Staphylococcus aureus are responsible for two-thirds of all health care-associated infections.[citation needed]
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared antimicrobial resistance to be one of the greatest threats to human health. On World Health Day 2011, themed ‘combating antimicrobial resistance’, WHO issued an international call for concerted action to halt the spread of antimicrobial resistance, launching a six-point policy package, recommended for governments, which sets out the measures governments and their national partners need to combat drug resistance.
References
edit- ^ Cooper, Matthew A.; Shlaes, David (7 April 2011). "Fix the antibiotics pipeline". Nature. 472 (7341): 32. Bibcode:2011Natur.472...32C. doi:10.1038/472032a. PMID 21475175. S2CID 4333723.
- ^ David J. Payne; Michael N. Gwynn; David J. Holmes; David L. Pompliano (January 2007). "Drugs for bad bugs: confronting the challenges of antibacterial discovery". Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. 6 (1): 29–40. doi:10.1038/nrd2201. PMID 17159923. S2CID 18290867.
- ^ Graves, Nicholas and Halton, Kate A. and Paterson, David and Whitby, Michael (2009). "The economic rationale for infection control in Australian hospitals" (PDF). Healthcare Infection. 14 (3): 81–8. doi:10.1071/hi09010 – via QUT ePrints.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
- ^ David, Hopwood (January 2007). "A call to arms". No. 6. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.(subscription required)
- ^ Sally C Davies; Tom Fowlera; John Watson; David M Livermore; David Walker (11–17 May 2013). "Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer: infection and the rise of antimicrobial resistance". The Lancet. 381 (9878): 1606–9. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(13)60604-2. PMID 23489756. S2CID 19926952.
- ^ Matteo Bassetti; Francesca Ginocchio; Malgorzata Mikulska (22 March 2011). "New treatment options against gram-negative organisms". Critical Care. 15 (215): 215. doi:10.1186/cc9997. PMC 3219411. PMID 21457501.
- ^ "Therapeutics". Funded Projects. Wellcome Trust. Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery (CO-ADD). Retrieved 25 June 2015.
