The Ontario government is providing $1 million to McMaster University for antimicrobial research and infectious disease management.
The money will be used to create a chemical library that will help develop new drugs against infectious diseases, along with creating online learning programs to help researchers in other fields transition to infectious disease management.
“At the core of McMaster’s research is a vast knowledge that spans all disciplines and this is really going to be essential for us to combat the current COVID crisis and future pandemics,” said Karen Mossman, McMaster’s associate vice-president of research and a specialist in virology and immunology.
Infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, pneumonia and food-borne illnesses, are becoming harder to treat because of antibiotic resistance, while other infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, don’t have any effective treatments yet.
“COVID-19 has reminded the world of its vulnerability to infectious diseases, and McMaster is working to ensure that, as a global society, we are able to address that vulnerability and prepare ourselves effectively for the next outbreak,” said McMaster president David Farrar.
Drugs are made up of building blocks and figuring out which pieces fit together best to fight an illness without causing harmful side effects can be a time-consuming process of trial and error. The new chemical compound library will allow the building blocks to be put together in new ways in the hope of finding effective treatments.
In addition, McMaster hopes to entice researchers from other fields to the realm of infectious diseases by creating online learning platforms.
“What we’ve realized is that there are a lot of highly skilled people out there who have skills in other areas but would like to transition into infectious disease research, but they lack some of the basic background,” said Gerry Wright, director of McMaster’s Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research.
“We need economists, we need social scientists, we need engineers, we need clinicians,” he added.
Ross Romano, Ontario’s minister of colleges and universities, called McMaster’s research achievements “phenomenal.”
“The work that McMaster is doing is continually putting our province on the map.”