For the first episode of Microbe Talk in 2025, we’re bringing you something fascinating and a bit different— non-communicable diseases. In this special episode, Clare chats with Professor John Tregoning, a Professor in Vaccine Immunology, about his new book, 'Live Forever? A Curious Scientist’s Guide to Wellness, Ageing and Death'. Clare and John chat about why he's writing about non-communicable diseases, the processes behind his book and any public engagement advice he'd give to our community.

Find out where you can buy a copy of Johns book by clicking here. You can also download a transcript of the podcast from our website here.

Johns other work can be found here.

Music by Yrii Semchyshyn from Pixabay

In this episode of Microbe Talk Clare spoke to Adam Aspinall who's Senior Director in the Access and Product Management team at Medicines for Malaria Venture. They discuss Malaria, antimalarial drug resistance and the work that Medicines for Malaria Venture is doing to support new drug discovery.

If you'd like to find out more about the Microbiology Society's Knocking Out AMR project, you can do so here.

If you'd like to find out more about the work that Medicines for Malaria do, take a look at their resources here:

MMV website: http://mmv.org

Severe Malaria Observatory : severemalaria.org

Music: Blue Dot Sessions - Blue Latex

For this episode of Microbe Talk Clare is joined by Dr Sanjay Patel, a paediatric infectious disease and immunology consultant at Southampton Children's Hospital and the National Clinical Advisor for Paediatric Antimicrobial Stewardship at NHS England. Clare and Sanjay discuss paediatric AMR, why it's often overlooked and how Sanjay and his colleagues from clinical, research and policy backgrounds are taking action.

If you'd like to learn more about research into antimicrobial resistance in neonates, take a look at this paper in Journal of Medical Microbiology.

You can find details of how to get involved with Knocking Out AMR here.

The resources and initiatives Sanjay mentioned are below:

• National empirical antimicrobial guidelines
• The common infection clinical pathways, the IV to oral switch decision aid
• The common infection paediatric pathways

Music: Inspiring Science Technology - Comma Media from Pixabay