Antibiotic resistance is one of the greatest current threats to human health, and we are in dire need of new antibiotics. However, our antibiotic pipeline is running dry, with the last major classes of antibiotics discovered decades ago and very few promising candidates on the horizon. We clearly need to rethink our current antibiotic discovery methods to increase efficiency and innovation.
This work takes a two-pronged approach to increasing throughput and breadth of antibiotic discovery. First, we showcase the Galleria mellonella insect model as an important step towards effective antibiotic development. Galleria is an ethical and cost-effective model that can screen the toxicity and efficacy of novel antibiotics in vivo. Second, we employ functional genomics approaches to understand antibiotic mechanism of action, which can be used to pinpoint, at scale, how novel antibiotics are working.
By providing an accessible, high throughput platform to screen in vivo behaviour of drugs and antibiotic mechanism, new and effective antibiotics will be one step closer to the clinic.