Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is the ability of microbes like bacteria, viruses and parasites to evade treatment by antibiotics and other drugs. This is an increasing threat to global health as new resistance mechanisms emerge and spread across the world.

For bacterial infections, we are poised to enter a ‘post-antibiotic’ era. The World Health Organization estimates that antibiotics treatments add an average of 20 years to all of our lives. But in the 80 years since the discovery of penicillin, our overuse of antibiotics has put pressure on bacteria to evolve resistance, leading to the emergence of untreatable superbugs that threaten the basis of modern medicine. Some types of bacteria that cause hospital acquired infections have lost susceptibility to all available antibiotics. This could mean a return to the high incidence of routine lethal sepsis from injury, childbirth and surgery seen before the discovery of penicillin.

The Centre for Antimicrobial Resistance at the University of Dundee brings together biologists, chemists, physicists, clinicians, mathematicians, epidemiologists, engineers and designers to focus on innovation in tackling antimicrobial resistance. Members of the Centre are located across the institution in the School of Life Sciences Research, the School of Medicine, the School of Science and Engineering, the School of Computing and NHS Tayside. Researchers within the Centre work on a variety of areas such as identifying targets for new therapeutic agents through basic research; developing innovative technologies for application in AMR research, driving leadership in antibiotic stewardship and performing drug discovery programmes to develop new antimicrobial agents. Much of the work of the Centre is carried out in multidisciplinary collaborations between different groups within Dundee and beyond. 

For further information please contact amr@dundee.ac.uk