Drug-resistant superbugs a growing concern

University of Saskatchewan (USask) researcher Dr. Jo-Anne Dillon (PhD) was part of a panel of some of the country’s top microbiology scientists who recently filed an eye-opening report on the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria and the risk it poses to Canadians and the global population.

“I’ve been sounding the alarm for 30 years on this,” said Dillon, a world-renowned researcher at USask’s Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization-International Vaccine Centre (VIDO-InterVac)—one of the largest Level 3 containment facilities in the world—and a member of the Department of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Immunology in the College of Medicine. “Bacterial AMR has been creeping up and creeping up for decades. And it’s a global problem.”

Much of the work of VIDO-InterVac researchers centres around vaccine development and rapid diagnostics for global viral outbreaks, with scientists feverishly working on a vaccine for the COVID-19 coronavirus. However, a select number of researchers like Dillon are studying the growing threat of AMR superbugs, organisms resistant to antibiotics like penicillin, with the potential to become a grave global threat.