Innovating Alternatives

To celebrate World One Health Day, Innovating Alternative brings you a bonus episode! This short story about rainforests and kissing beetles illustrates the One Health concept in action.

Get in touch and let us know what you think of the podcast by email [email protected] or on twitter @Livestock_IDRC.

Production: This mini episode was developed and produced by Eric Greer and Evelyn Baraké. Sound design by Eric Greer.

Music Credits: Royalty free music by Bensound (https://www.bensound.com/royalty-free-music/track/enigmatic)

Photo Credit: Felipe Guhl, CC BY 2.5 , via Wikimedia Commons

The Innovating Alternatives podcast profiles research projects funded under the Innovative Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance (InnoVet-AMR) initiative, a CA$27.9 million partnership between the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the UK Department of Health and Social Care’s (DHSC) Global AMR Innovation Fund (GAMRIF).

Full transcript & shownotes available

in English: https://www.idrc.ca/sites/default/files/2021-11/shownotes-one_health_day-mini_ep-en.pdf

and in French:https://www.idrc.ca/sites/default/files/2021-11/shownotes-one_health_day-mini_ep-fr.pdf

More than a mouthful, the Streptococcus Suis bacterium is a leading cause of mortality in the pig industry worldwide and drives high volumes of antimicrobial use. With its sugar capsule and its multiple and varied strains, this sneaky pathogen evades attempts to control its spread. In this episode, we dive into the cutting-edge of vaccine development and learn about glycoconjugate vaccines and using big data to find hypothetical proteins.

Innovating Alternatives is a serialized podcast that will delve into the issue of antimicrobial resistance, a slow-moving pandemic that risks erasing the last 80 years of modern medicine’s progress. We will take you right to the cutting edge of science, where researchers are developing new and surprising alternatives to antibiotics and innovative solutions to reduce the use of antimicrobials in livestock and aquaculture production.

For show notes please visit: https://www.idrc.ca/en/research-in-action/innovating-alternatives

Get in touch and let us know what you think of the podcast by email [email protected] or on twitter @Livestock_IDRC

To learn more about the Innovative Veterinary Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance (InnoVet-AMR) initiative please visit: https://www.idrc.ca/en/initiative/innovet-amr-innovative-veterinary-solutions-antimicrobial-resistance

Image: IDRC/Bartay

Caption: Culturing pig lung sample to see if Streptococcus Suis is present

Nanobubbles, bacterial small talk and a pack of PACAP punks punching holes in bacteria. In this episode we explore the diversity that is aquaculture, and the diverse approaches that researchers are adopting to develop alternatives to antibiotics for farming, the underwater type that is.

Innovating Alternatives is a serialized podcast series that will take you right to the cutting edge of science, where researchers are developing new and surprising alternatives to antibiotics and innovative solutions to reduce the use of antimicrobials in livestock and aquaculture production.

For show notes please visit: https://www.idrc.ca/en/research-in-action/innovating-alternatives

Get in touch and let us know what you think of the podcast by email [email protected] or on twitter @Livestock_IDRC

To learn more about the Innovative Veterinary Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance (InnoVet-AMR) initiative please visit: https://www.idrc.ca/en/initiative/innovet-amr-innovative-veterinary-solutions-antimicrobial-resistance

Image: Diego Delso - WikimediaCommons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jaulas_flotantes_de_salmones,_Kam%C3%B8yv%C3%A6r,_Noruega,_2019-09-03,_DD_66.jpg

Caption: Floating salmon cages in Kamøyvær, Norway.

Chickens, mangoes and hypothetical shopping. In this episode we explore phages, the viruses of bacteria. We talk to researchers who are looking to harness bacteria-killing abilities of phages to tackle the issue of Salmonella in poultry farming in Kenya and Pakistan and how this novel technology might be perceived and adopted by end-users.

Innovating Alternatives is a serialized podcast series that will take you right to the cutting edge of science, where researchers are developing new and surprising alternatives to antibiotics and innovative solutions to reduce the use of antimicrobials in livestock and aquaculture production.

For show notes please visit: https://www.idrc.ca/en/research-in-action/innovating-alternatives

Get in touch and let us know what you think of the podcast by email [email protected] or on twitter @Livestock_IDRC

To learn more about the Innovative Veterinary Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance (InnoVet-AMR) initiative please visit: https://www.idrc.ca/en/initiative/innovet-amr-innovative-veterinary-solutions-antimicrobial-resistance

Image: By Emily Brown combined the pictures ‘Phage’ by Dr Graham Beards, also licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0., and ‘Bxz2_Plaque’ by Deborah Jacobs-Sera and Graham Hatfull. - Combination + modification of the pictures ‘Phage’ by Dr Graham Beards, also licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0., and ‘Bxz2_Plaque’ by Deborah Jacobs-Sera and Graham Hatfull., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=99696994

Caption: Transmission electron micrograph of multiple bacteriophages attached to a bacterial cell wall; the magnification is approximately 200,000.

In this first episode of Innovating Alternatives, we go down the rabbit hole of bacterial biology to get a handle on the basics of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) before Prof. Dame Sally Davies brings into focus the implications of this slow pandemic and what we are doing to deal with it.

Innovating Alternatives is a serialized podcast series that will take you right to the cutting edge of science, where researchers are developing new and surprising alternatives to antibiotics and innovative solutions to reduce the use of antimicrobials in livestock and aquaculture production.

For show notes please visit: https://www.idrc.ca/en/research-in-action/innovating-alternatives

Get in touch and let us know what you think of the podcast by email [email protected] or on twitter @Livestock_IDRC

To learn more about the Innovative Veterinary Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance (InnoVet-AMR) initiative please visit: https://www.idrc.ca/en/initiative/innovet-amr-innovative-veterinary-solutions-antimicrobial-resistance

Image: CDC/Dr. JJ Farmer (PHIL #3031), 1978., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Caption: The disk diffusion test, or agar diffusion test, or Kirby–Bauer test (disc-diffusion antibiotic susceptibility test, disc-diffusion antibiotic sensitivity test, KB test), is an antibiotic susceptibility test. It uses antibiotic discs to test the extent to which bacteria are affected by those antibiotics. In this test, wafers containing antibiotics are placed on an agar plate where bacteria have been placed, and the plate is left to incubate. If an antibiotic stops the bacteria from growing or kills the bacteria, there will be an area around the wafer where the bacteria have not grown enough to be visible. This is called a zone of inhibition. More at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.o/wiki/Disk_diffusion_test

Introducing Innovating Alternatives, a serialized podcast that will delve into the issue of antimicrobial resistance, a slow-moving pandemic that risks erasing the last 80 years of modern medicine’s progress. We will take you right to the cutting edge of science, where researchers are developing new and surprising alternatives to antibiotics and innovative solutions to reduce the use of antimicrobials in livestock and aquaculture production.

For show notes please visit: https://www.idrc.ca/en/research-in-action/innovating-alternatives

Get in touch and let us know what you think of the podcast by email [email protected] or on twitter @Livestock_IDRC

To learn more about the Innovative Veterinary Solutions for Antimicrobial Resistance (InnoVet-AMR) initiative please visit: https://www.idrc.ca/en/initiative/innovet-amr-innovative-veterinary-solutions-antimicrobial-resistance

Image: © Bartay | IDRC

Caption: A postgraduate student creates subcultures of bacteria at the Institute of Bioscience - University Putra Malaysia in Selangor.