NWO awards KIC call ‘Antimicrobials for the preclinical pipeline’ to Consortium

NWO awards KIC call ‘Antimicrobials for the preclinical pipeline’ to  Consortium chaired by Marnix Medema

The call stimulates research on antimicrobials (including antibiotics) as they are of great value to healthcare. They are necessary for treating infections and play an important role in medical procedures such as chemotherapy and organ donation. The increasing resistance to these drugs is therefore something that will put great pressure on our healthcare system. NWO and the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport jointly developed this call for proposals to stimulate the development of new antimicrobial agents and additional therapies against bacterial and fungal infections. The receiving research consortia consist of researchers, doctors and partners working at international research institutes, hospitals, private companies and civil society organisations, among others [source].

Iterative design of novel antimicrobial peptides with deep active learning and biosynthetic engineering

Consortium: Francesca Grisoni (TU Eindhoven), Olga Genilloud (Fundacion Medicina), Steven Schmitt (Myria Biosciences), Helge B. Bode, Nathaniel Martin (Leiden University), David Ruau (NVIDIA)

Microbial peptide antibiotics comprise a major proportion of currently available antimicrobial drugs. Many of these are produced by modular enzymes, which in principle are amenable to engineering to make better drugs. In this project, the researchers will employ novel biosynthetic engineering technologies in combination with deep active learning to develop new and improved peptide antibiotics with favorable pharmacological properties, and thus provide new weapons for the battle against antimicrobial resistance.