Sydney pharmacy researcher receives funding to develop therapeutic alternatives

The Sydney Faculty of Pharmacy congratulates Professor Kim Chan and his research collaborators on being awarded funding for the project titled “Harnessing Bacteriophages as Natural Predators to Combat the Superbugs: A Pulmonary Drug Delivery Approach.”

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has awarded approximately US$5 million in funding for 24 research projects including Professor Chan’s. The funding seeks to develop non-traditional therapeutics for bacterial infections to help address the growing health threat of antibiotic resistance.
The award to Professor Chan and his team will provide support for two years’ research, with the possibility of three additional years of funding.
“The discovery, development and deployment of antibiotics have transformed medicine; however, microbes continually evolve and become resistant to these lifesaving drugs,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.
“New strategies are desperately needed to treat patients with antibiotic-resistant infections that often are deadly. These new NIAID grants will provide funding to researchers developing unique, non-traditional therapies that could complement or even replace currently available antibiotics that are losing effectiveness.”