Postdoctoral fellow Xuefei Chen inspects plates of fungal pathogens with Gerry Wright, professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences, in the Wright Lab at McMaster University in January.Nick Iwanyshyn/The Globe and Mail
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Could you imagine a world without antibiotics? Without these critical drugs, many of our modern-day health interventions – from chemotherapy to C-sections – become potentially life threatening. Society would be catapulted back into an era when even a simple scratch could prove fatal.
Medical professionals are increasingly worried about the possibility of this grim future, in the face of a growing threat: the superbug.
Superbugs are bacteria and other pathogens that have become resistant to available drugs; collectively they represent one of the gravest public-health threats of our time. Sometimes dubbed a “slow-moving pandemic,” antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been projected to cause 10 million deaths annually by 2050 – more than cancer’s current toll.
Dr. Gerry Wright is one of the researchers fighting back against this future. A professor of biochemistry and biomedical sciences, Dr. Wright and his team at McMaster University in Hamilton have been working to find new antibiotics capable of killing drug-resistant bacteria — sometimes by digging through the dirt themselves.
In March, Globe health science reporter Jennifer Yang reported on the Wright Lab and their efforts to stave off the rise of the superbug.
Canadian researcher Gerry Wright is searching for the next generation of life-saving antibiotics
On Tuesday, April 21 at 11 a.m. ET, Yang and Dr. Wright will be answering reader questions about the feature, the dangers of superbugs and what goes into researching new antibiotics.
Why are antibiotics so important? Why are new antimicrobials so hard to find and develop into drugs? Where do superbugs come from, and how do they defeat antibiotics? What are Canadian scientists doing to tackle this problem? Submit your questions now.
Submit your question about the fight against antibiotic-resistant superbugs
On Tuesday, April 21 at 11 a.m. ET, health science reporter Jennifer Yang and McMaster biochemistry and biomedical sciences professor Dr. Gerry Wright will be answering reader questions about the dangers of superbugs and what goes into researching new antibiotics. Leave your question in the form below, or send an e-mail to audience@globeandmail.com.