Superbugs

It's predicted by 2050 there could be 10 million deaths

per year from bacterial infection by superbugs,

or super-bacteria that cannot be treated

by any of the antibiotics that we currently know.

Once bacteria find a surface, they start to multiply

and they form the protective layer around them.

Antibiotics will treat the outside of the biofilm,

but the bacteria that are in the middle of the biofilm

where all the bacteria are multiplied won't be treated.

Eventually most antibiotics we currently have

won't work against bacteria anymore

because bacteria are developing resistance.

[Russell] So if we are able to develop a process

which will kill and remove the bacterial biofilms

and bacteria within those, not using antibiotics,

then that's a fantastic advance in medical research.

At RMIT we are one of the first people

to look at multi-pronged strategies

in terms of killing and removing that biofilm.

Because we've got got a technology

that can actually penetrate into that biofilm,

what we're about to do is remove the biofilm

as well as kill the cells.

Using new liquid metal technologies

we could magnetically active the particles

and make them move under a magnetic field.

The bacteria will then be inactivated,

I believe this could be a new method

of treating bacterial biofilms.

Ideally this would be an end product that could

be used to make a real difference to people's lives.

- With more funding support for this particular project

we would be able to hire more post-doc and research fellows

who have the expertise to extend this work even further

than what we've done at the moment.

This is a world first, there aren't any other researchers

or research teams looking at this,

so it's very promising to be working

on innovative technologies for biofilm treatments.

- We've generated such significant data

and the technology is paradigm shifting.

It differentiates the RMIT research

to all other stuff that's going on,

it's just so exciting.