Helping Chemists Discover New Antibiotics

The
world is facing a crisis in treating infectious diseases, with a scarcity
of new antibiotics in development to treat the growing threat of drug-resistant
“superbugs”. We need new strategies to reinvigorate
the antibiotic pipeline. In this Viewpoint we discuss one such approach,
encouraging the community of synthetic chemists to participate in
testing chemical diversity from their laboratories for antimicrobial
potential. CO-ADD, the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug Discovery,
offers free screening against five bacteria and two fungi with follow
up hit confirmation and validation, all with no strings attached.