Imagine a future where a simple infection could cause economies to grind to a halt.
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This could become our reality as microbes become resistant to current medicines, such as antibiotics and antimalarial drugs.
Professor Lara Malins and her team at the Australian National University's Research School of Chemistry are working to find new molecules for our next line of defence against drug-resistant diseases.
"There's statistics that say antimicrobial resistance more broadly by about 2050 is anticipated to cost about $US100 trillion ($151.24 trillion) a year in terms of health care costs," Prof Malins said.
"We're talking COVID levels of economies stopping, where a simple infection, we might no longer have molecules to cure and to treat that."
Prof Malins has been awarded a prestigious Snow Fellowship worth $8 million over eight years to discover new molecules in nature that could be used to target diseases.
"We are certainly at the point where we know that nature produces some really intriguing, amazing structures, but we don't always know yet how to make them," she said.
"And that's where I hope to fill the gap with my research. An example of the types of molecules that we're interested in are our gut microbiome peptides.
"It's actually fascinating because you have bacteria in your gut that live in your intestines, commensal bacteria, and they produce lots of really complicated structures that a synthetic chemist in the lab will struggle to make."
The eight-year program will allow the team of about 15 researchers to use the latest technology to delve into the world of peptides without the usual stress of having to find new funding every three years.
Chair of Snow Medical Tom Snow said it was the first time the fellowship had been awarded to a chemist.
"We are delighted to support Lara's important work," he said.
"She is a true example of Snow Medical's aim to support researchers who will shape the next generation of health and medical innovation."
Prof Malins grew up in Hawaii. Her father worked for the US Navy on a submarine, so the family lived in various coastal cities.
She moved to Sydney for her PhD and fell in love with Australia. After some postdoctoral training in the United States, she made the move to Canberra in 2017, the first landlocked city she's ever lived in.
Prof Malins said while she misses the ocean, Canberra had brought with it great opportunities to advance her career.
"It's such a comfortable place to live and I think ANU in particular ... the resources are amazing for research here and I think it's a really unique research environment," she said.
One of the greatest medicinal breakthroughs was the discovery of penicillin by accident in 1928, but it took almost 30 years for synthetic chemists to understand the structure of the molecule.
"Hopefully it doesn't take us 30 years from the time point of finding a really cool molecule in nature and then ultimately translating that into a therapy," Prof Malins said.