Antibiotic resistance: the race to stop the 'silent tsunami' facing modern medicine

With deaths from antibiotic resistance far outstripping even those of epidemics such as Ebola, scientists are desperate to discover new classes of antibiotics

Off the coast of California, nearly 20,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, scientists from the San Diego Institute of Oceaneography are collecting samples of marine life from the ocean floor. At first glance, these small clumps of sediment may appear nothing special, but the micro-organisms which lie within may one day provide an answer to one of the most urgent issues in modern healthcare: the global antibiotic resistance pandemic.

To put the scale of the problem in perspective: the Ebola epidemic in West Africa captured the headlines in 2014, and in total the virus accounted for just over 11,000 fatalities, making it as the most devastating outbreak of the virus in history. Current estimates place the annual number of deaths from antibiotic resistant bacteria at around 700,000 worldwide. Unless things change this figure is predicted to rise to 10 million by 2050, with growing numbers of bacteria already fully resistant to every clinical antibiotic available.