Category: News and press

VINNOVA – Sweden’s Innovation Agency, has joined the InnovaResistance call, making €1.1 million available to Swedish industrial partners. Sweden is already represented in this call by the Swedish Research Council which contributes up to €3 million to Swedish academic partners.

Antibiotics are powerful drugs that prevent many deaths each year. Antibiotics are a precious global resource that must be managed on a sustainable ecological basis, akin to fisheries. But today, antibiotics are either managed in a haphazard fashion or mismanaged. An important task is to fix the broken economic Incentives.

Source: Chatam House

This report describes NIAID´s (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) ongoing research portfolio of basic, translational, and clinical research in antimicrobial resistance and outlines a combination of innovative approaches based on the latest scientific advances to be pursued.These strategies draw on multidisciplinary parterships, which are essential for achieving a coordinated and nimble approach to addressing Antibacterial Resistance threats as they emerge

The Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance is hosting its Strategic Research Agenda launch Conference – “Implementing a Global Research Agenda for AMR” – in Brussels on April 03, 2014.
Conference Objectives:
• To achieve wide recognition and awareness for the findings and roadmap of the SRA
• To encourage uptake of the recommendations developed in the SRA by a wide range of stakeholders
• To encourage a follow-up and future collaboration between research funding agencies in the field of   AMR
• To encourage the participation of private funders
• To discuss among international partner funders of key priorities of the SRA and what is relevant for
them by developing global funding opportunities
• To work towards a global Joint Programming Initiative

Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) of French-speaking Belgium has joined the first JPIAMR transnational call and is making at least €0,2 million available. Belgium was represented from before by Research Foundation Flanders (FWO).

Call Open!

The Strategic Research Agenda has now been published. The core of the agenda is the identification and description of six priority topics (Priority Topic table):

• A. Development of novel antibiotics and alternatives for antibiotics – from  basic research to the market.
  B. Design strategies to improve treatment and prevention of infections by developing new diagnostics.
• C. Standardisation and extension of surveillance systems to establish a global surveillance program on antibiotic resistance and antibiotic use.
• D. Transmission dynamics.
• E. The role of the environment as a source for the selection for and spread of AMR.
• F. Designing and testing interventions to prevent acquisition, transmission and infection caused by AMR.

The report of the conference on Antimicrobial Resistance – Incentivizing Change Towards a Global Solution organized by Chatham House and the Centre on Global Health Security is now available online.

Key aims that were addressed:

• What new efforts by governments and stakeholders in the developing and developed world are needed for global antimicrobial conservation? What obstacles constrain effective action? How can they be addressed?
• What are the most efficient ways of stimulating new drug development for long-term sustainability? What has been tried? What is most likely to work? What does this mean for government policies?
• How do we address antibiotic use in the food and agriculture sector (including fisheries)? How do we promote cross-sectoral collaboration? What are the obstacles? How can they be overcome?

The first joint call features participation of 14 member countries, including newest addition Turkey.

The management board has accepted the final SRA draft as the official SRA of JPIAMR. After several years of work and a very intensive 2013, the SRA is now finalized and will be made public in early 2014. The final version considers all the comments and input from the autumn public and national consultations and will serve as a base for JPIAMR activities for years to come. We would like to express our gratitude to all who have contributed to this very important document!
Strategic Research Agenda