Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) is awarding $1.75 million to the University of Melbourne at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity to develop an oral therapeutic that restores the activity of common antibiotics used to treat community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP).

Researchers at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, the University of Queensland, Griffith University, the University of Adelaide and St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have unlocked a key to making existing front-line antibiotics work again against Streptococcus pneumoniae, the bacteria that cause pneumonia.

A study by Australian microbiologists at Queensland, Melbourne and Griffiths universities has shown that the candidate neurodegenerative disease drug PBT-2, combined with a polymyxin antibiotic, induced potent antimicrobial activity against polymyxin-resistant gram-negative pathogens.