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Crowdsourcing the Discovery of New Antibiotics
First time accepted submitter Josiah Zayner writes "Katie Drummond at The Verge reports that 'the Infectious Diseases Society of America warned that the pipeline of new antibiotics was "on life support," with only seven drugs in advanced stages of development to treat multidrug-resistant gram-negative superbugs. That's in part because, unlike drugs prescribed to treat chronic conditions, antibiotics are only taken for a few days or weeks at a time — meaning they're less profitable for pharmaceutical companies.' Dr. Josiah Zayner, a synthetic biology fellow at NASA, and Dr. Mark Opal, a neurobiologist and drug development specialist have started an Indiegogo campaign: The ILIAD Project. ILIAD stands for the International Laboratory for Identification of Antibacterial Drugs. Contributors to the project will receive Science kits with all the materials needed for testing environmental samples, such as plants, insects, and bacteria, for antibiotic properties. The information will then be documented in Open manner on Wiki-style website to create the first Massively Multi-Scientist Open Experiment."
I'd argue we need thousands. Tens of thousands would be even better. If you're in the west it's nice to think bacterial infections are no big deal. The majority of the world who live in poverty would greatly disagree with your limited scope however. I visited a leper colony in Africa. Yes they still have those, and it's fucking horrific. Mycobacterium leprae (the bacterium that causes it) cannot be grown in culture. It has to be grown ON an animal or human (think about that for a minute) and has also started to become resistant to the only known antibiotic to be affective against it. Should this resistance continue (and it will) we could start seeing outbreaks in the west. The day your dick falls off, you might think 7 antibiotics "in the pipeline" may not be enough. Since none of those 7 even remotely target leprosy.