"We're only a plane ride away from all of these things." IIDR Director, Dr. Gerry Wright comments on the World Health Organization (WHO)'s list of most dangerous superbugs.
Source: CBC and McMaster IIDR
10th year Anniversary of the IIDR →
Throwback to July 2007 at the grand opening ceremony of the IIDR. Michael G. DeGroote’s gift of $10M transformed an ambitious idea into a reality. Today, the IIDR has become an epicenter for some of McMaster's most outstanding research efforts.
Source: McMaster IIDR Facebook
A Common Platform for Antibiotic Dereplication and Adjuvant Discovery →
A group of Wright Lab member has developed a new antibiotic resistance platform (ARP) that can be used to help discover new antimicrobial drugs and preserve existing ones.
Read more here about this exciting accomplishment that confronts the antibiotic resistance crisis.
Source: McMaster IIDR
The Gairdner-Farncombe Symposium on the Intestinal Microbiome →
The Gairdner Foundation and The Farncombe Institute have partnered to bring the Gairdner-Farncombe Symposium, which will feature Drs. Gerry Wright, Nathan Magarvey & Mike Surette.
The symposium took place November 24, 2016.
Source: Farncombe - McMaster University
Five IIDR Members Awarded More Than $14M in Federal Grants →
Drs. Gerry Wright, Karen Mossman, Mark Loeb, Zhou Xing and Mike Surette will receive more than $14M from CIHR to advance their research programs.
Special Series: Fast Forward (Superbugs) →
The American nation is in a “moment of crisis,” Donald Trump declared, as he launched into his nomination acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week. “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life.”
Source: Green Planet Monitor
Scientists in desperate hunt for antibiotics see potential breakthrough – in your nostril →
Gerry Wright receives NRC Research Press Senior Investigator Award →
The Canadian Society for Molecular Biosciences has named Dr. Gerry Wright, professor and scientific director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research (IIDR), as the recipient of the 2016 NRC Research Press Senior Investigator Award.
Source: McMaster Daily News
Look to outer space for help in fighting health threats: prof →
Doctors should look to outer space for help in fighting Earth-bound deadly diseases such as Ebola, urges a McMaster professor.
Source: Hamilton Spectator
Antibiotic Hunters →
Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness, threatening to make common infections deadly. Is the future of medicine lurking in the ice waters of Iceland?
Source: The Toronto Star
THE UNSEEN: Millions of microbes are yet to be discovered. Will one hold the ultimate cure? →
Studying microbes inevitably causes a reordering of one’s perceptions: for more than two billion years, they were the only life on this planet, and they remain in many ways its dominant life form. Estimates of the number of bacteria—5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—are higher than for all the stars, and Epstein noticed that when he stained his microbes with fluorescent dyes and placed them under a microscope they looked just like constellations in deep space.
Source: The New Yorker
Infectious disease and diagnostics projects receive nearly $15M from Ontario government →
'Resistance to antibiotics is a challenge of global proportion that is undermining advances of modern medicine,' says Gerry Wright, director of the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research. 'We are losing our ability to control infection because microbes are evolving resistance at a faster pace than we are delivering new antibiotics. This funding will help our team find creative ways to solve the crisis.'
Source: McMaster Daily News
Your Food: Antibiotic use in Canada and its implications for human health →
Canadian livestock consume more than 1.6 million kilograms of antibiotics every year, according to the Canadian Animal Health Institute. But what are the effects of those antibiotics on the human body? Public health experts say the use of antimicrobials in food animals could have serious implications on our overall health and future resistance to infectious disease.
Source: Global News
Superbugs for dummies: Explaining the battle between bacteria and antibiotics →
The discovery of an alarming new superbug in the US has set off a flood of media coverage warning of dire days ahead.
Source: STAT News
Dreaded Superbug Found For First Time In U.S. Patient -- A Physician's Perspective
Brace yourselves. The scary antibiotic resistance gene, mcr-1, has been found in the U.S. for the first time, in a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman with symptoms of a urinary tract infection.
Source: Forbes
Is this the end of the road for antibiotics? Superbug resistant to ALL drugs reaches the US, experts warn →
A woman in Pennsylvania has become the first American to test positive for a strain of bacteria that is resistant to all antibiotics, even those used as the last line of defense.
Source: The Daily Mail UK
Antibiotics From Scratch →
Researchers have devised an approach for synthesizing new macrolide antibiotics from simple chemical building blocks. Using this method,Andrew Myers of Harvard University and colleagues synthesized more than 300 new antibiotic candidates, several of which were effective against some of the most stubbornly drug-resistant bacterial strains, according to the study published today (May 18) in Nature.
Source: The Scientist
Wright & Brown: The greatest threat of our time — antibiotic resistance →
The world — including Canada — is finally waking up to the worst public health threat of our times. Last week, the World Health Organization and Canada’s Auditor-General independently issued similar warnings: that everyone must do much more to fight antimicrobial resistance.
Source: National Post
Fighting superbugs by hacking antibiotic resistance →
Because with the pipeline of new antibiotics drying up and resistance spreading, we need a new game plan for the next big superbug.
Source: OZY
New fund to boost research unveiled at McMaster →
A $2-billion vein of new cash has been opened to Canada's universities and colleges.
Source: The Hamilton Spectator