Anthony Coates is the Professor of Medical Microbiology at St George’s, University of London. His main research interests are in antibiotic development and in tuberculosis.  With Dr Yanmin Hu, Dr Coates invented a new platform technology to create novel patented combinations of repurposed or new antimicrobials which can rescue existing antibiotics. He founded the Antibiotic Biotech, Helperby Therapeutics plc, to develop new patented combinations against highly resistant common bacterial infections. One of these combinations is in the market, three are in the clinical trial stage and two are in late stage preclinical development. Recently this approach has gained ground and now there is increased interest in such combinations. The reason for this increased interest is that the traditional Fleming method of creating new chemical entity antibiotics is too expensive and too slow, leading to numerous failures, particularly in the market. The new Helperby platform promises to accelerate the development of novel antibiotic treatments at an affordable cost.

Dr Coates has been awarded numerous national and international grants from the European Commission, British MRC, charities and industry, and is named inventor on over 128 patents with co-inventor Dr Yanmin Hu. He has published more than 180 peer-reviewed publications and 13 books as editor.

He serves on the Scientific Advisory committee of the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership(GARDP) and served as a director on the board of Biotechs from Europe innovating in Anti-Microbial resistance Alliance (BEAM) until 2023.

He founded the networks Antibiotic Discovery-UK, Antibiotic Discovery-Global, and co-founded BEAM and the world’s first antibiotic discovery charity called Antibiotic Research-UK.