NAM · New Antimicrobials

Antibacterial resistance is spreading globally at an alarming rate and continues to increase. New potent antibacterial agents and therapies are therefore continually needed. In recent years, new antibacterial compounds have mainly been additions to the existing classes of drugs and very few new structures have been developed. Pharmaceutical industry has little interest in developing novel structures due to high investment and low profit expectancy. The derivatives of existing drugs typically raise bacterial resistance much faster than completely new compounds. To overcome the chronic problem of antibiotic resistance, totally new compounds and approaches are required, involving collaboration of researchers from various sectors and disciplines, as well as high societal investments. The NAM project aims to confront these problems by intense collaboration between industry and academia. The project aims at i) discovery of totally new antibacterial compounds from one of the richest untapped natural sources, endophytes, ii) development of totally new approaches based on antimicrobial host defense peptides, iii) research on the mechanisms of action of antimicrobial compounds. Through these objectives novel anti-infective agents can potentially be applied to the battle against bacterial resistance. NAM is a highly multidisciplinary consortium, consisting of groups in biology, chemistry, biophysics, biochemistry, microbiology and biotechnology. It consists of two companies (one SME and a large biotech company), and three university research laboratories in four different countries within the EU.