{"id":213,"date":"2023-11-19T14:14:15","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T18:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sta.uwi.edu\/principal\/?p=213"},"modified":"2025-06-12T14:34:40","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T18:34:40","slug":"uwi-scientists-speak-november-19th-2023","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sta.uwi.edu\/principal\/uwi-scientists-speak-november-19th-2023\/","title":{"rendered":"UWI scientists make strides in the fight against antibiotic resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Treating infectious diseases is currently a major challenge globally because of the high prevalence of antimicrobial resistance among pathogenic microorganisms. The discovery of penicillin from a fungus in the late 1920s led to the development and widespread use of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections. Antibiotics are chemicals produced or derived from microorganisms that are able to kill or inhibit other microorganisms in extremely low concentrations. For many decades, they were considered \u201cwonder drugs\u201d because of their impact on saving the lives of people and animals with bacterial infections. However, the ability of some infectious microorganisms to resist antibiotics soon became evident.<\/p>\n

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has increased gradually among pathogen populations, driven by the overuse of antibiotics and widespread environmental pollution from untreated human and animal wastes. The problem has risen astronomically within recent times, and today, the occurrence of \u201csuper bugs\u201d that are resistant to most antibiotics is posing a great challenge and threat to human health and welfare. In 2019, it was estimated that 1.27 million people died globally due to AMR bacterial infections, and an almost 10-fold increase is expected by 2050 if no effective strategy is implemented for curbing this problem.
\nFinding new antibiotics with novel modes of action is one way to deal with the AMR problem. However, the global antibiotic discovery pipeline has almost gone dry, and no new antibiotics with novel modes of action have been developed for several decades. Most research programmes end up with the rediscovery of known antibiotics or the identification of new forms of existing classes. Additionally, many large pharmaceutical companies have abandoned their antibiotic development programmes because of the high risks to investments in this area. It may cost up to US$ 1 billion to develop a new antibiotic drug which may only be marketable for a relatively short period of time before resistance develops. Therefore, the responsibility for discovering and developing new antimicrobial drugs has now fallen into the hands of small biotechnology companies and universities.<\/p>\n

The microbial drug discovery team in the Faculty of Science and Technology at the UWI, St. Augustine has taken up this call and has been working with undergraduate and postgraduate students on the discovery of new antimicrobial compounds from indigenous microorganisms. The team is led by principal investigator Prof Adesh Ramsubhag, and current and former members include Prof Anderson Maxwell (Retired), Prof Jayaraj Jayaraman, Dr Mohindra Seepersaud (now at Moderna, USA), Dr Ramish Pingal and Dr Nigel Jalsa. Several hundred antimicrobial-producing bacteria and fungi have been isolated from the pool of extremely diverse and unique environmental microorganisms present in Trinidad and Tobago. The purification of bioactive molecules from only a handful of these microorganisms has resulted in the identification of at least a dozen new compounds. For example, Dr. Tresha Dobson (PhD Chemistry) identified 7 new antimicrobial compounds within known chemical classes from the Pitch Lake bacterium Bacillus amyloliquefaciens UWI-W23, as part of her doctoral studies. Similarly, Dr Antonio Ramkissoon (PhD Microbiology and now Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University) characterized a new riminophenazine antibiotic, but more importantly, synthesized a library of compounds modelled after a metabolite from a local Pseudomonas aeruginosa strain and found some members of this library had the ability to break antibiotic resistance in bacteria. These compounds were able to restore the potency of a wide range of antibiotics to kill or inhibit resistant bacteria. Advanced research is currently taking place with the support of the UWI-ITT Fund to develop these compounds as adjuvants (agents that enhance activity) for antibiotics so that current and old antibiotics can once again become useful in the fight against AMR infections.<\/p>\n

Molecular analysis and computational modelling studies have shown that the adjuvant molecules inhibit bacterial sensing systems, which are needed to detect the presence of antibiotics in order to activate genes involved in resistance. Hence, when the adjuvant is combined with an antibiotic, the resistance genes of bacteria remain turned off, and they are easily killed or inhibited by the antibiotic. The research also showed that the adjuvant compounds have excellent properties needed for therapeutic agents, such as high efficacy and low toxicity. Importantly, the potential of the compounds has been demonstrated, where treatment of severely infected mice with both adjuvant and antibiotic resulted in rapid restoration of health, while those treated only with antibiotics died after a short time. Two international patent applications have been filed and two external laboratories from the USA have also been engaged to conduct more detailed pre-clinical safety and efficacy testing to take these compounds further along the drug developmental pipeline.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Professor Adesh Ramsubhag<\/p><\/div>\n

Professor Ramsubhag is a former Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology and Head of the Department of Life Sciences, UWI, St Augustine. He currently serves as the Coordinator of the MSc in Biotechnology programme.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Treating infectious diseases is currently a major challenge globally because of the high prevalence of antimicrobial resistance among pathogenic microorganisms. The discovery of penicillin from a fungus in the late 1920s led to the development and widespread use of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections. Antibiotics are chemicals produced or derived from microorganisms that are able […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1124,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-uwi-scientists-speaks"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\r\nUWI scientists make strides in the fight against antibiotic resistance - Office of the Campus Principal<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sta.uwi.edu\/principal\/uwi-scientists-speak-november-19th-2023\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"UWI scientists make strides in the fight against antibiotic resistance - Office of the Campus Principal\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Treating infectious diseases is currently a major challenge globally because of the high prevalence of antimicrobial resistance among pathogenic microorganisms. 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