A cross-disciplinary team from the Universities of Oxford, Ulster and UCL today announced major funding from EPSRC, part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), to tackle the growing challenge of Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR).
The new 5-year programme, "Beyond Antibiotics," will start in October 2021 and bring together researchers from across the Physical and Life Sciences to develop new technology to improve both the diagnosis and treatment of bacterial infections.
The 2019 World Health Organisation (WHO) report on AMR identifies it as: "one of the greatest threats we face as a global community." The evolution of drug-resistant bacteria, our over-use of antibiotics, and failure to develop new methods for tackling infection could leave us without viable treatments for even the most trivial infections within the next 3 decades. It is estimated that drug-resistant infections could cause 10 million deaths each year by 2050 and an annual economic cost of £69 trillion.