Scientists starting action to tackle antibiotic resistance

SCIENTISTS from around the world attending the EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF) conference in Manchester have been told 2016 marks the year a “long overdue” scientific fightback against the threat of antibiotic resistance finally gets underway.
 
Dr Peter Jackson, the project leader behind the AMR Centre, a newly formed public-private organisation which will both conduct and fund research into new drugs and diagnostic advances, told delegates: “For the last decade agencies around the world have been expressing concern about over-use of antibiotics in human and animal health and the dramatically rising rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
 
“We are moving into a new era. The international health community has stopped just talking about our diminishing supply of effective antibiotics – and started working on ways to solve this crisis.”
 
Jackson, chair of the steering group behind the AMR Centre, which was set up in March this year and operates from the Alderley Park bio campus in Cheshire, cited the UK Government AMR Review, led by economist Lord O’Neill, as key in galvanising action.
 
“The O’Neill Review has made it abundantly clear what will happen if we fail to act globally – some 10 million needless deaths a year by 2050, $100 trillion in lost GDP, and the reversal of decades of advances in medicine. That message about economic impact has struck a chord in Europe, the USA, China and elsewhere.
 
“The AMR Centre is itself part of the UK’s response and our mission is to accelerate a new pipeline of treatments and diagnostics. We will do this by providing funding, capability and capacity to support partner organisations, in particular small and medium-sized businesses and research institutes, which have exciting new approaches to AMR.”

Jackson told delegates that the AMR Centre will employ 75 scientists by the end of its first full year of operation. It is expected to put five new programs into pre-clinical development in 2016-2017 – and 20 in total by 2022.

Rowena Burns, chief executive of Manchester Science Partnerships, which hosts the UK’s largest biotech cluster focused on AMR at its Alderley Park campus, told delegates: “Despite the pending global health crisis around our diminishing supply of antibiotics this area has been hugely under-funded and is in dire need of new commercial models.
 
“We are now seeing these challenges being talked about and addressed in the form of public-private partnerships such as the new AMR Centre, which we were very pleased to welcome to Alderley Park.  

“But there is a great deal more that needs to happen to incentivise innovation in terms of novel therapies and developing diagnostics, which would help minimise overuse.  There is also a massive global problem around the behaviour of both patients and physicians which has taken us down the path of overuse of antibiotics.”

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