24 min
Battling Bacteria - Community Microbe Champions! Connecting Citizens to Science
-
- Social Sciences
We have a conversation including our first citizen scientist to kick of 2023. Lou Kellett is an active participant in the Liverpool School of Tropical medicine Swab and Send programme, which is striving to find the next breakthrough in bacteria to defeat antimicrobial resistance.
We also hear from Dr. Adam Roberts, the creator of the programme, and Dr. Amy McLeman, who is taking the bacteria that shows promising results, through to the next stage of investigation in the lab.
Swab and Send is an innovative programme that relies on the anticipation of citizens to infinitely broaden the search for a solution to the AMR problem.
Amy provides us with an insight:
“Antimicrobials can be produced by bacteria or fungus from anywhere; from the soil in your local park to your kitchen sink. These are just two of the places we are looking for the next new antibiotics and it works! We are finding microbes producing interesting antimicrobials that our team are working on characterising, but did you know it can take 10-15 years and over $1.7 billion to develop a new antibiotic from discovery to market. Even then once a new antibiotic is being sold the investment return is less than $50 million on average each year. Research and development costs massively outweigh the financial return”.
About our guests:
Dr. Adam Roberts – Reader, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Adam Roberts leads a research group investigating various aspects of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) from molecular biology and evolution of transferable AMR to genomic surveillance and antimicrobial drug discovery.
Dr. Amy McLeman - Postdoctoral Research Associate, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Amy works as a postdoctoral research associate on discovery and characterisation of novel antimicrobials from environmental isolates. Her work includes outreach to individuals and communities to communicate the importance of AMR and what Swab and Send is doing to tackle this, and to also encourage involvement of the public to take swabs of everything and anything and send them into us to look for the next antibiotic.
Lou Kellett – Active Citizen Scientists, Wales, UK
Lou has worked in local food and farming business for the last couple of decades, including organic farming. An active participant in many citizen science projects, Lou is particularly enthusiastic about the swab and send programme as it creates the opportunity for to share the unique local environmental habitats with the wider world. Lou finds being an active citizen scientist is a great way satiate a hungry sense of curiosity.
Relevant links:
https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/public-engagement/swab-send
https://www.facebook.com/swabandsend/
https://www.future-science.com/doi/10.2144/fsoa-2020-0053
#SwabAndSend
Want to hear more podcasts like this?
Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about the methods and approaches that researchers apply to connect with communities and co-produce solutions to global health challenges.
The podcast covers wide ranging topics such as NTD’s, NCD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change, all linked to community engagement and power dynamics.
If you would like your own project or programme to feature in an episode, get in touch with producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, The SCL Agency.
We have a conversation including our first citizen scientist to kick of 2023. Lou Kellett is an active participant in the Liverpool School of Tropical medicine Swab and Send programme, which is striving to find the next breakthrough in bacteria to defeat antimicrobial resistance.
We also hear from Dr. Adam Roberts, the creator of the programme, and Dr. Amy McLeman, who is taking the bacteria that shows promising results, through to the next stage of investigation in the lab.
Swab and Send is an innovative programme that relies on the anticipation of citizens to infinitely broaden the search for a solution to the AMR problem.
Amy provides us with an insight:
“Antimicrobials can be produced by bacteria or fungus from anywhere; from the soil in your local park to your kitchen sink. These are just two of the places we are looking for the next new antibiotics and it works! We are finding microbes producing interesting antimicrobials that our team are working on characterising, but did you know it can take 10-15 years and over $1.7 billion to develop a new antibiotic from discovery to market. Even then once a new antibiotic is being sold the investment return is less than $50 million on average each year. Research and development costs massively outweigh the financial return”.
About our guests:
Dr. Adam Roberts – Reader, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Adam Roberts leads a research group investigating various aspects of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) from molecular biology and evolution of transferable AMR to genomic surveillance and antimicrobial drug discovery.
Dr. Amy McLeman - Postdoctoral Research Associate, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Amy works as a postdoctoral research associate on discovery and characterisation of novel antimicrobials from environmental isolates. Her work includes outreach to individuals and communities to communicate the importance of AMR and what Swab and Send is doing to tackle this, and to also encourage involvement of the public to take swabs of everything and anything and send them into us to look for the next antibiotic.
Lou Kellett – Active Citizen Scientists, Wales, UK
Lou has worked in local food and farming business for the last couple of decades, including organic farming. An active participant in many citizen science projects, Lou is particularly enthusiastic about the swab and send programme as it creates the opportunity for to share the unique local environmental habitats with the wider world. Lou finds being an active citizen scientist is a great way satiate a hungry sense of curiosity.
Relevant links:
https://www.lstmed.ac.uk/public-engagement/swab-send
https://www.facebook.com/swabandsend/
https://www.future-science.com/doi/10.2144/fsoa-2020-0053
#SwabAndSend
Want to hear more podcasts like this?
Follow Connecting Citizens to Science on your usual podcast platform or YouTube to hear more about the methods and approaches that researchers apply to connect with communities and co-produce solutions to global health challenges.
The podcast covers wide ranging topics such as NTD’s, NCD’s, antenatal and postnatal care, mental wellbeing and climate change, all linked to community engagement and power dynamics.
If you would like your own project or programme to feature in an episode, get in touch with producers of Connecting Citizens to Science, The SCL Agency.
24 min