A Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition has been launched by the government to encourage development of innovative solutions to the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis in humans.
Competition
The competition, which will launch on Monday (16 July), will be run by Innovate UK — the UK’s innovation agency — and will be open to business, academic institutions or research organisations. Within this competition, antimicrobials are considered as antibacterials (except for tuberculosis), antifungals and antivirals (except for HIV).
Up to £10 million will be invested by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) to be split into two competition strands. Strand 1 projects must explore the scientific and technical feasibility of innovative solutions through proof of concept studies and strand 2 projects will be more technical advanced. Complete details are available on the government website.
“This is a serious issue that is with us now, causing deaths,” said chief medical officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, in her stark warning on the issue of AMR last year. “If it was anything else people would be up in arms about it. But because it is hidden they just let it pass. It does not really have a ‘face’ because most people who die of drug resistant infections, their families just think they died of an uncontrolled infection. It will only get worse unless we take strong action everywhere across the globe. We need some real work on the ground to make a difference or we risk the end of modern medicine.
“Not to be able to effectively treat infections means that caesarean sections, hip replacements, modern surgery, is risky. Modern cancer treatment is risky and transplant medicine becomes a thing of the past.”
We recently spoke with Lord Jim O’Neill, who was commissioned by the government and Wellcome Trust to chair the review into AMR — the final results of which were published in 2016, during the health and life sciences day of the Liverpool Business Festival. Lord O’Neill is pushing for more work to be done, particularly from the pharma industry. “Of the ten areas of focus [for the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance] there has been a ridiculous amount of talk, but in terms of action, nothing,” he stressed. “There are many, many parts of the world where people have no idea about this challenge.
“We need to introduce state of the art technology right at the heart of our health system, here and all over the world to permanently reduce the excessive demand for antibiotics and to solve this problem, permanently, because even if we do get new drugs, it would only solve it for a generation until the antibodies become resistant to them as well.”