Amping antimicrobial discovery with automation
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 - 11:20
in Physics & Chemistry
The antimicrobial arsenal that we count on to save millions of lives each year is alarmingly thin—and these microbes are rapidly evolving resistance to our weapons. But help may be on the way: In a study posted in the AMB Express, researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) show that automated techniques commonly used to screen new drugs for mammalian cell toxicity could also dramatically speed up the challenging task of antimicrobial discovery.