Professor Wei Huang leads new research on treating antimicrobial resistant bacteria

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is making many infections increasingly difficult to treat and is becoming one of the greatest threats to human health. By 2030, AMR is predicted to cause severe global economic losses and push additional 24 million people into extreme poverty. Despite this growing crisis, the pipeline of new treatments remains alarmingly insufficient.

Professor Wei Huang’s Oxford team and OSCAR have developed a new type of precision antimicrobial method using safe, non-replicating bacterial particles called SimCells and mini-SimCells. These particles are engineered to recognise harmful drug-resistant bacteria, attach to them, and kill them while leaving other beneficial bacteria largely unaffected. Because the system can be reprogrammed to target different pathogens, it could provide a faster and more precise way to respond to emerging antibiotic-resistant infections.

Read more about this research by Professor Huang.