14

June 2025 ESRFnews

B

ETWEEN now and 2050, some 39 million

people worldwide are likely to die as a direct

result of antibiotic resistance That was the

conclusion of an international study late last year

believed to be the first to comprehensively analyse the

global health burden of the problem But the study did

have better news if we can develop new antibiotics for

the most challenging bacteria 11 million deaths could

be avoided We are at a turning point that could define

the health and wellbeing of future generations said

Stella Kyriakides the European Commissioner for

health and food safety at around the same time

The ESRF is encouraging us to turn in the right

direction Having some of the most powerful Xray

instrumentation in the world the ESRF is uniquely

placed placed to help scientists study antimicrobial

resistance (AMR) and develop new antibiotics. Its

extremely brilliant and coherent Xrays are able to

expose the structures of biological molecules that other

Xray sources would easily miss This is helped by a suite

of cuttingedge and automated instrumentation as

well as a pair of cryoelectron microscopy cryoEM

facilities for proteins that are hardest to crystallise

Just one example of the ESRFs unique instrumen

tation is the ID09 beamline Even before the ESRFs

upgrade to the Extremely Brilliant Source EBS ID09

was a global leader in timeresolved studies across

many disciplines now armed with much higher Xray

brilliance and coherence it is allowing scientists to

reap even greater precision from smaller samples For

Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global

health. ESRF science is tackling it head-on.

ANTIBIOTIC RESISTANCE

Resistance

is futile