Making antimicrobial drug discovery more efficient
Antibiotic resistance is a growing public health threat, and we urgently need new antibiotics to protect patients from resistant “superbugs.” Integrating the Shared Platform for Antibiotic Research and Knowledge (SPARK) within CO-ADD, our aim is to enable scientific collaboration and accelerate antibiotic discovery.
SPARK was launched to address the scientific barriers that inhibited the discovery and development of antibiotics against Gram-negative bacteria. Combining data from scientific journals and contributions from individual users and companies that may not be otherwise published, SPARK hosts nearly 160,000 compounds and more than 120,000 associated data points.
The integration of SPARK complements CO-ADD’s open screening initiative and aligns with CO-ADD’s core to engage the global antimicrobial research community to provide an open accessible knowledge for the discovery and development of novel antibiotics. The combined initiatives will continue to connect with the global community and will grow SPARK’s existing collection with high-quality, rich data and enhanced modelling tools.
Our goal is to deliver a more robust and comprehensive drug discovery pipeline that enables researchers to learn, design and test their compounds, and ultimately, develop novel antimicrobials. We are actively planning to add more data and functionality to SPARK. To keep informed on further developments on SPARK and CO-ADD, please subscribe to the CO-ADD newsletter
Accessing SPARK Data
SPARK archived data can be accessed via the Collaborative Drug Discovery Vault. We'll be working to add more data and functionality, so stay tuned!SPARK was a data sharing initiative created and operated by The PEW Charitable Trusts to spur the discovery of novel antibiotics. This initiative was transferred to the Community for Open Antimicrobial Drug discovery (CO-ADD) at The University of Queensland in 2021 to continue its development