Imperial College London Wins Funding to Reinvent Antibiotic Discovery

One of the most pressing challenges in modern medicine is the slow decline in our ability to fight bacterial infections. Now Imperial College London has secured major new funding to help reverse that trend, with a project aimed at transforming the way new antibiotics are discovered.

The work targets one of the hardest problems in the field, the rise of bacteria that no longer respond to existing drugs. It reflects a growing sense of urgency among scientists that the world needs fresh approaches if it is to stay ahead of increasingly resistant infections.

A major new grant

The project has been awarded 3.1 million pounds over a period of three years. The funding comes through the Gram Negative Antibiotic Discovery Innovator programme, known as Gr-ADI, which supports research into some of the most difficult bacteria to treat.

The money is provided by a partnership of major health funders, namely the Gates Foundation, the Novo Nordisk Foundation and Wellcome. At Imperial the work is being carried out in partnership with Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust through the Fleming Initiative.

The problem of gram negative bacteria

The research focuses on gram negative bacteria, a group that is particularly hard to treat because of the way their cells are built. Resistance among these bacteria has been identified as one of the leading drivers of deaths linked to antimicrobial resistance worldwide.

For this project the primary focus is Klebsiella, a bacterium that can cause serious infections in hospitals and beyond. This represents an expansion from an earlier focus on E. coli, broadening the scope of the search for new ways to defeat these organisms.

What the research aims to do

Rather than searching for a single new drug, the team wants to create what it describes as a rulebook. The aim is to accelerate the discovery of new compounds that can work against gram negative pathogens, giving other researchers a clearer path to follow.

A central part of the challenge is getting drugs into the bacteria in the first place. The project will work to identify new antibiotic targets and to understand how to deliver drug molecules through the tough outer defences that make these cells so resistant.

The team behind it

The effort brings together expertise from several different departments at Imperial. It is guided by Dr Andrew Edwards from the Department of Infectious Disease, Professor Ed Tate from the Department of Chemistry and Dr Matthew Child from the Department of Life Sciences.

The wider work is connected to the Fleming Initiative, which is directed by Professor Alison Holmes. This kind of collaboration across infectious disease, chemistry and life sciences reflects how complex the search for new antibiotics has become.

Part of a global effort

The Imperial project does not stand alone. It forms part of a much larger 60 million dollar Gr-ADI portfolio, which is supporting a total of 18 projects spread across 17 countries around the world, all focused on the same difficult family of bacteria.

That international scale reflects the nature of the threat. Antimicrobial resistance does not respect borders, and tackling it effectively requires researchers in many countries to share ideas, methods and discoveries as they work towards common goals.

Why it matters

Antimicrobial resistance threatens to undermine routine parts of modern medicine, from surgery to cancer treatment, all of which rely on effective antibiotics. Yet the discovery of genuinely new antibiotics has slowed dramatically in recent decades, leaving a worrying gap.

Announced in February 2026, this project offers a measure of hope. By focusing on the rules that govern how drugs reach their targets, the Imperial team hopes to help rebuild a pipeline of new antibiotics before resistance advances any further.