Resistance is futile
PURPOSE
Our mission is to halt AMR before it irreversibly harms humanity.
AMR is older than modern medicine. Microbes have competed and outwitted each other for billions of years, long before the first human.
Then humanity discovered antibiotics, which were a genuine miracle.
Children survived infections that had killed for centuries, surgery became safe, and childbirth stopped being a coin toss for mother and child. Antibiotics worked so well that we stopped looking for other ways to manage infections. And because the fear of bacteria still lives in our deepest memory, we reached for antibiotics pre-emptively, often, and everywhere.
A century of overuse, across medicine, agriculture, and industry has tipped the balance towards a modern crisis.
The heaviest burden falls on the most vulnerable: newborns, the elderly, the immunocompromised, and communities with limited access to effective antibiotics.
Lixa's mandate is to find scalable answers at the core of AMR, working across sectors that rarely meet.
If you are walking an AMR solution path of any kind, whether in your household, farm, biotech, ship, or global health, you are welcome here.
From the people
SURVIVORS . FAMILIES . CAREGIVERS.
AMR SURVIVOR
I'm in my twenties now, a few years after my last antibiotic treatment for a 6-7 year AMR infection. Most people my age have gone through high school and are in their trades or university degrees. I spent those years asleep, not knowing whether I would ever recover.
AMR isn't an abstract problem. It is overwhelming when it hits and the treatments that you expect to work, don't. And if it can hit a 12-year-old, athletic boy, it can hit anyone.
Jonathan Barker
Chronic resistant infection,
Perth, Australia
BEREAVED FAMILY
I know what it means when medicine stops working—my daughter Mallory died from an antibiotic resistant infection. Now I have a grandson, and when I look at him, I understand that what we do next will define the world he inherits.
Diane Shader Smith
Daughter, Mallory Smith, died from resistant B. cepacia infection.
Los Angeles, USA
INNOVATION THESIS
The goalposts have moved.
AMR is a different problem from what Fleming and his contemporaries were solving.
AMR is prevalent across bacterial species and antimicrobial treatments and bacteria have found multiple pathways to resist antibiotics. What if there was a central deactivation mechanism that could "reverse" resistance? We also know that the harsher we treat bacteria, the stronger the resistant survivors. These points underpin much of Lixa's drug discovery path.
Lixa questions everything in microbiology. We abandoned a search for molecules to kill bacteria, and focused on understanding the universal nature of resistance itself.
ELEMENTS OF THE PIONEERING MINDSET
FOUNDATION
First Principles
We only believe in "seemingly" intractable problems. Everything is solvable, it just takes a different perspective or asking the right questions. We strip away assumptions, until we hit the first principles of a problem, and then built solutions from there.
Results Driven Determination
Timely and scalable impact on AMR is the only measure that matters. Every investment, every action is focused on real outcomes that make lives better and industries more efficient.
Empathy in Action
We feel and connect to the pain of AMR in full: the patient waiting for an antibiotic that works, the ecosystem disrupted by resistance, even the bacteria we study. It drives our determination.
Collegiate Integrity
Egos are out of the room. Contributions are respected, no matter where they come from. We make space for different people, different disciplines, different perspectives. We are all in this together.
Agile Intelligence
We hold our hypotheses loosely, while our purpose is held rigidly. When data contradicts the theory or plan, we move rapidly, without attachment. Ideas cross-pollinate, disciplines bleed into each other, and every unexpected finding becomes a launching point.
