Resistance and Virulence

Antibiotics can save lives within days, or even hours. Antibiotics are cheap. Antibiotics underpin modern medicine, including most surgical interventions and anticancer treatments. Antibiotics are great – except when they don’t work. Why is this and what can we do about it? I will talk about how antibiotics work, why resistance emerges and how we can find new antimicrobials. Science cannot find all the answers, however, as there are also global, political and behavioral issues to address.

An estimated 100 trillion bacteria call our bodies home. We are only now fully realizing how these complex communities interact with us, effecting our digestion, immune system and possibly even our mental well being. However not all bacteria are happy to co-exist and evolutionary pressures force some to take up arms against us. In this talk I will discuss some of the weapons of choice utilized by bacteria in order to invade our bodies and cause disease.