Introduction

As we are more acutely aware of the dangers of MRSA and superbugs, it has become more widely accepted that new drugs are needed which act upon new bacterial targets. However,  the cost to pharma of developing a new antibiotic - which could be rendered useless before the investment in its discovery has been recouped - has meant that many companies have no new drugs in the pipeline and more worryingly, have no active research in the area. 

This timely meeting focused on one active research field still uncovering new drug leads - natural products, an area that has strong interest amongst academic scientists, medics, clinical scientists, pharmaceutical scientists. 

Themes

The conference was split into two half-day sessions on the following themes:

• Clinical Problems
• Solutions and New Antibiotics

Scientific Committee

Dr Dominic Campopiano (chair)
University of Edinburgh, UK

Dr David Spring 
University of Cambridge, UK

Dr Jodi Lindsay 
St George's University of London, UK

Co-sponsor

We would like to thank the Society of General Microbiology (SGM) for their co-sponsorship support.