Dr Louisa Jenkin, UKRI’s AMR Program Lead, contributes UKRI’s key activities to key UKRI activities and global efforts to reduce antibiotic resistance.
Antibiotic Resistance (AMR) – which occurs when pathogens stop responding to antibiotics and products used to treat them – is a major threat to the health and environment of humans, animals and plants. Overuse and misuse of antibiotics have led to a global increase in AMR. This has a harmful effect.
With the growing threat to global public health, many countries around the world are setting strategies and initiatives to address the issue and reduce the occurrence of AMR. The UK is no exception, with a national strategy and action plan to address antibiotic resistance since 2000. Most notably, the UK government’s 20th year vision was established by 2040 for a world in which antibacterial resistance is effectively contained, controlled and mitigated, and is therefore strengthened by a variety of strategies.
The non-sectoral public body, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which helps the UK government realize AMR ambitions, drives many initiatives and projects in the AMR field of nine research councils. Georgie Purcell, editor of Innovation Platform, learned more from Dr. Louisa Jenkin, who heads UKRI’s AMR programme, about these activities and how organizations promote research and innovation to combat AMR.
How do UKRI’s actions and goals align with the UK government’s strategy to reduce AMR?
In 2019, the UK government established a 20-year vision to contain, manage and mitigate AMR by 2040. This is provided through a series of five-year national action plans. We are currently caught up in a second national action plan issued in 2024. UKRI played an important role in the development of its plan, working closely with the Ministry of Health (DHSC) and other government partners, particularly to support its top 10 research priorities and how the plan is supported by UKRI in its wider government funding. These priorities are tailored to the UKRI strategy and its initiatives infection strategy themes and were drafted with key inputs from across UKRI to reflect the views of the wider AMR research community. The plan highlighted a research community fragmented in the human, animal and plant fields. They are not very integrated and data, resources, and learning are not well shared. He also highlighted the importance of using a fully integrated system base to develop new tools, technologies and interventions, as well as what is known as the “one health approach” that will help address AMR.
UKRI has a specific commitment highlighted in the National Action Plan, which is what the UKRI AMR program offers. The first phase of the programme focuses on the Capacity Building Awards for the interdisciplinary network to help connect and expand the UK AMR community. The second phase is for a larger, more focused research project.
Can you explain some of the important ways UKRI is working on to tackle AMR issues?
We build on a relatively large legacy of conducting many cross-county studies on AMR previously.
We support AMR research and innovation through a variety of mechanisms, including responsive mode funding, which has several funding rounds each year and is very open beyond our authority. Each research council has its own responsive mode, but it also funds the UKRI Cross Counting Responsive Mode to support interdisciplinary research projects that span two or more council authorities. It also targets initiatives and strategic programs, international partnerships and joint partnerships with industry and other stakeholders.
Our collective and collaborative strengths mean we can provide interdisciplinary solutions that improve people’s lives and livelihoods. Of course, working on AMR is one of these key challenges.
When talking about AMR, a lot of the focus is on antibacterial properties. However, it’s much broader than that. Includes fungi, viruses and protozoa. One health approach mentioned above not only allows for integrated and collaborative work across sectors and communities in various sectors, but also allows for humans, animals (including livestock, aquaculture, companion animals, wildlife, wildlife), plants (including trees), buildings and sewage systems, food chains, and the environment of both social and human behavior and human environments. It concerns collaborative design research to inform and support the needs of end users (policy makers, practitioners, clinicians, industry) and the broader society.
What are the important projects/initiatives UKRI is investing in?
Our main program is my leading UKRI AMR program. This forms part of UKRI’s tackling infection strategy theme. Tackling infections is one of five UKRI strategic themes, aiming to prepare for future disease outbreaks while halting the AMR’s slow-moving pandemic. It is that it can better understand the problem and detect and confuse the appearance of AMRs in animals, humans and plants. The programme will help you improve your understanding of where threats lie, build interdisciplinary research capabilities, and transform your thinking by applying a wide range of methods, skills, and techniques.
As I said, we have a commitment within the National Plan of Action, and we have already completed phase 1 of the program. In July 2024, we invested £4.8 million in eight new interdisciplinary networks, primarily to connect researchers from a wide range of disciplines, to connect a variety of stakeholders and sectors, and to encourage underrepresented fields, such as the social sciences. It is about building and sharing knowledge and skills, and the networks we support cover a diverse range of sectors across the AMR landscape. These include agriculture. Food; Environment; Human and Veterinary Drugs; Diagnosis; Policy and Behavioral Research; Engineering; and Social Sciences. They also have a network dedicated to early career researchers, which will help you acquire the skills and experiences you need to become a future leader. These networks also have specific funds to support small pilots and feasibility studies and enable exchanges between academia, industry and other stakeholders.
Currently preparing for Phase 2, which will be released in March, supporting more intensive and large-scale interdisciplinary research projects. This phase is designed to have more solution focus. Complement another UKRI activity known as the Pace (pathway to antibacterial clinical effects) program. The £30 million program is supported by Innovate UK, LifeArc, and The Medicines Discovery Catapult. It brings together academics and small businesses not only in the UK but also around the world to provide funding, support and advice to build early-stage antibiotics and diagnostic projects, and accelerates the pre-clinical AMR pipeline.
There are also major international collaborations with European partners. This is very important as pathogens and AMRs do not respect the border. The emergence of drug resistance in a country is very likely to affect all of us. Perhaps our biggest European investment is the EU Joint Programming Initiative on Antibacterial Resistance (JPIAMR). The partnership involves 29 countries and is to support cross-border projects. Additionally, they recently worked with six Southeast Asian countries in a multilateral partnership examining epidemic or antibiotic-resistant infectious diseases. We are preparing to announce the results of this funding opportunity and will fund approximately 23 joint projects. Of these, 17 are located in the AMR space.
Another important investment is the National Biofilms Innovation Center (NBIC). This received a total investment of £16 million from the UKRI Biotechnology and Biological Science Research Council (BBSRC) between 2017 and 2022.
Microorganisms form slimy biofilms. This is the main cause of AMR. As an innovation and knowledge center, NBIC promotes biofilm research and innovation, knowledge exchange and training with the aim of connecting academia, industry and policy makers to tackle global challenges.
In 2023, an independent review of the NBIC highlighted the UK’s great profits as a result of the BBSRC and innovated UK £16 million investment, including a total economic impact of around £204 million.
Can you explain in detail the advances in your work in this field so far?
The UK is a global leader in AMR research. For us, great success is our joint approach. Our strong involvement and support in multiple sectors and across multiple countries has been able to influence the direction of various programs and strategies, including the UK government’s national action plan and the development of new European programmes.
What’s next in the direction of your AMR work?
We are currently conducting an assessment of the Cross Council AMR Initiative to help inform the direction of funds from the government.
AMR remains a UKRI priority and will continue to support it through the various schemes I have mentioned. We will also continue to work on national action plans that are deeply involved in governance. The chair of the government’s AMR Research Steering Group will not only allow government funders and other stakeholders to coordinate and cooperate more effectively, but will also help them agree with future evidence gaps and research priorities and determine the most appropriate funding routes and infrastructure needed to provide them.
It also funds eight interdisciplinary networks running for around 3-6 months. We are really interested in coordinating across them, looking for areas of synergy and construction, linking them to a wider landscape. Like I said, we are about to announce a phase 2 that we are very excited about.
We will continue to advance opportunities with European and international partners, particularly to protect the health of both humans, plants and animals, and develop our future portfolio. In Europe, we are contributing to the development of a new European partnership for one Health AMR. The 10-year programme is scheduled to begin at the end of 2025 and will be involved in it.
We are also working to secure future funding to continue building momentum for AMR research, with a focus specifically on expanding fungal disease activity and realizing opportunities from a “planetary health” perspective, such as crop disease risk and social and behavioral research.
This article will also be featured in the 21st edition of Quarterly Publication.
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