Santero Therapeutics: Towards a new generation of antibiotics

Every year, more than 750.000 people die from an infection that resist currently available drugs. The development of antibiotics in the 1940’s radically changed healthcare and greatly improved life expectancy. However, the last generation of truly new antibiotics was discovered about 40 years ago, thus enabling the emergence of resistant bacteria throughout the world. In the absence of truly innovative therapies, the situation is bound to get worse: current forecast predict that 10 million people will die from resistant infection by 2050. Therefore, there is a crucial need to develop new approaches to treat sever infections for which we are running out of pharmacological tools while preventing new resistances.

The spin-off, created in March 2021, builds on recent advances in the laboratory of Abel Garcia-Pino (WELBIO-ULB), in collaboration with Cédric Govaerts (ULB), in the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of bacterial metabolism to propose a completely innovative approach to develop a new generation of antibiotics.

“The word Santero is a nod to my origins as it refers to the traditional healers in the Cuban culture” says Abel, who was born in Cuba before coming to Belgium for his PhD, and eventually settle there.

Source : Press release ULB

Photo : Photo by Nastya Dulhiier on Unsplash