The Institute for Drug Resistance serves the drug resistance scientific, research and clinical communities. The Institute will serve as a vehicle for facilitating, supporting and promoting novel, multidisciplinary approaches to the challenges of drug resistance.  We believe that a multidisciplinary focus on the parallels in pathways and mechanisms by which resistance occurs within quickly evolving diseases will fill  important gaps in current research and form the basis for fundamentally different and novel solutions by putting drug resistance considerations first in structural and therapeutic drug design.

The Need

Drug resistance negatively impacts the lives of millions of patients and costs our society billions of dollars annually. As quickly as we design, develop and manufacture novel or modified drugs to treat infectious agents, the microbial world responds with a diversity of resistance solutions. In fact, resistance often develops so rapidly that the drugs are obsolete shortly after their introduction. Hundreds of millions of dollars in research investments have to date failed to provide long-term solutions to this challenge.

The Solution

The Institute for Drug Resistance was founded upon the observation that close parallels can often be drawn between resistance seen in one disease state and resistance seen within another. Cross-disciplinary collaboration and discussion could allow for a better understanding of resistance and result in real clinical benefits. Until now, the study of drug resistance has been very much a disease specific endeavor, with no centralized, cross-disciplinary network in the world, limiting intellectual progress and breakthroughs. Clinicians and researchers are often unaware of the progress, resources and parallels in other diseases.

Vision

Our Vision is to shift the paradigm of drug resistance research by putting drug resistance considerations first in drug design strategies and to realize the parallels of quickly evolving diseases.  To support this Vision, the Institute is creating the needed centralized cross-disciplinary network to advance and disseminate emerging knowledge in drug research.  In addition, we facilitate collaborative drug resistance research; sponsor development of scientific review articles on drug resistance; and develop conference opportunities through which researchers can more fully explore this powerful concept and how it can be used for the betterment of all