OUTLOOK

13 May 2026

To battle antibiotic resistance, researchers are leaving no stone unturned, looking at folk traditions and harnessing AI to find new antibiotics.

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Antibiotics are losing their effectiveness. With the growth of antimicrobial resistance, routine treatments could become impossible owing to the risk of infection. Cancer treatments, care of newborns and routine surgeries are all in danger if this trend isn’t curbed. Millions of people are already dying from infections by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. In 2023, the World Bank estimated that antimicrobial resistance could increase health-care costs by US$1 trillion by 2050. So, researchers are urgently looking for solutions.

Some of these might come from surprising places, and this has led researchers to investigate organisms at the planet's extremes.…