Registration for a live webinar on 'Innovations in antibiotic discovery: combating resistant infections' is now open.
See webinar detailsUpcoming Live Webinar
Innovations in antibiotic discovery: combating resistant infections
Tuesday May 20, 2025
2:00 AM PDT / 5:00 AM EDT / 10:00 AM BST / 11:00 AM CEST
2:00 AM PDT / 5:00 AM EDT / 10:00 AM BST / 11:00 AM CEST
In this webinar, Professor Mark Blaskovich will explore why antimicrobial resistance has become an urgent threat to human health, present the current state of the antibiotic pipeline and its evolution over the past decade, and provide an overview of approaches to discovering both new antibiotics and non-traditional antimicrobial agents.
Research projects from the Blaskovich group will be used to illustrate some of these tactics, including a crowdsourcing initiative designed to uncover novel chemical diversity with antimicrobial activity (the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery), an attempt to develop a ‘new and improved’ version of an existing antibiotic, a ‘rediscovery’ approach focused on a neglected antibiotic initially identified over 50 years ago, and novel approaches based new technologies used to target cancer cells. Without significant changes in treating drug-resistant infections, we face a return to a pre-antibiotic era where a simple scratch can kill.
Speaker
Prof. Mark Blaskovich
The University of Queensland, Australia
Professor Mark Blaskovich is an ‘antibiotic hunter’ and Director of Translation for the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at The University of Queensland, as well as Director of the ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Environmental and Agricultural Solutions to Antimicrobial Resistance (CEAStAR), and the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery (CO-ADD). Blaskovich obtained a PhD in Organic Chemistry from U Waterloo (Canada), followed by a commercial career in medicinal chemistry for 15 years at Molecumetics (USA), CEPTYR (USA) and Mimetica (Brisbane). Since 2010 he has been developing new antibiotics, non-antibiotic therapies and diagnostics to detect and treat resistant bacterial and fungal infections in an academic environment, including multiple industry collaborations focused on antimicrobial resistance. He co-founded CO-ADD, a global antibiotic discovery initiative that has collaborated with over 300 research groups. Blaskovich’s research has led to >150 publications, 11 patent families, and recognition as a Highly Cited Researcher.