A brilliant young scientist who created a new class of antibiotics that could save millions of lives and avert medical catastrophe has died aged just 29.
Kirsty Smitten was given just months to live after being diagnosed in February with heart cancer, an incurable disease so rare that it affects just two people a year in the UK, and lost her battle for life in the early hours of 4 October.
She had been receiving treatment at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham for seven weeks before her death. Her family were at her bedside during her final hours.
Her sister-in-law Sukhi Smitten, wife of her older brother Matt, said: ‘Kirsty fought to the end but this was such an aggressive cancer that she couldn’t beat it.
She kept saying how much she had to live for – her brother Dan is getting married in November and Matt and I are expecting a baby in February. She would have made the most wonderful aunt. We’re all heartbroken.
The family, from Solihull, were still reeling from the sudden death of Ms Smitten’s seemingly healthy father Kevin, 61, who suffered a heart attack while playing football in Portugal last October, when they began to fear for her health.
Ms Smitten, who had been playing hockey and football every day, woke up in the night with agonising chest pains in November last year, The Mail On Sunday reported earlier this year.
It took three months of tests before she was finally diagnosed with cardiac angiosarcoma – a tumour in her heart.
This type of tumour grows back and is likely to spread or rupture, causing her heart to fail, and Kirsty was in no doubt that this was a death sentence, but hoped to live long enough for a cure to be found.
In the months that followed, the biochemist, who has a PhD in chemistry and was named in Forbes magazine’s prestigious 30 Under 30 list for science and healthcare in 2020, continued to lead the fight against antimicrobial resistance – which the World Health Organisation calls one of the biggest threats to global health – in which bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites evolve over time and no longer respond to drugs.
With her team at Metallo Bio, a company she set up with the support of her supervisor at the University of Sheffield, Ms Smitten has developed two antibiotic compounds to treat bacterial infections, including strains of pneumonia and meningitis that have become resistant to the drugs usually used to treat them, as well as infections that develop in wounds and after surgery.
In recent weeks, however, she has been unable to work as she struggles to breathe or move around her hospital bed.
Her family are keen that her legacy, both in bringing the new class of antibiotics to the public and in raising awareness of cardiac angiosarcoma – she regularly posted on Tiktok and Instagram and supported other sufferers online – continues after her death.
