The development of antibiotics almost completely extinguished infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, pneumonia, typhoid fever and meningitis in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 21st century, however, the overuse of antibiotics led to the emergence of multidrug resistant (MDR) bacteria. Therefore, besides classical antibiotic development, alternative strategies employing modern tools from nanotechnology or synthetic biology need to be pursued.
The local training network ALERT addresses this challenge by establishing a dedicated doctoral training program with an international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral focus. Nineteen excellent Early Stage Researchers (ERSs) conducted cutting-edge research projects in the field of antimicrobials and have been trained in specialist advanced courses, training schools and other networking activities.
ALERT has contributed to the major goal to overcome the thread of MDR bacteria through the development of novel antimicrobial drug candidates by chemical, biotechnological and nanotechnological synthesis and the subsequent testing of promising candidates in vivo. The objectives have been distributed into four tasks. Task 1 was focused on methods to shorten the time for identifying and preparing novel antimicrobial molecules using innovative chemical synthesis approaches. Task 2 was dedicated to the development of new antimicrobials at a biotechnological level, exploiting rational design and synthetic biology construction principles. In addition, task 3 addressed nanotechnology approaches to create new antimicrobials that can locally fight pathogens. Task 4 covered the in vivo testing of promising antimicrobial drug candidates resulting from Tasks 1-3.
