The University is part of a four-year project using genomic surveillance to help tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in medicines used for humans and animals.
One of humanity’s biggest threats, it’s predicted that as many as ten million people could die each year as a result of AMR by 2050. The World Bank predicts that from 2015 to 2050, the cost of AMR will be $3.5 billion per year on healthcare alone.
Genomic advances
Recent genomic advances enable us to better understand AMR and gain key insights for surveillance, diagnostics, and infection prevention control practices. Genomics is the study of an organism's genome – its genetic material – and how that information is applied. All living things, from single-celled bacteria to multi-cellular plants, animals and humans, have a genome – humans are made up of DNA.
The Transdisciplinary Antimicrobial Resistance Genomics (TARGet) Network focuses on bringing together academia, government and industry to capitalise on these genomic advances.
The network, jointly led by the Universities of Birmingham and Cambridge, in partnership with Strathclyde and the University of Oxford, brings together academia, business, NHS, social care settings and veterinary medicine. Working across disciplines, TARGet will develop new ways of working to deliver new solutions to the AMR challenge.
Project co-lead, Professor Paul Flowers from Strathclyde’s School of Psychological Sciences and Health, said:
TARGet provides a fantastic opportunity for people from a range of disciplines and industries, to come together and help reduce the negative impacts of AMR.
Unless we act now, AMR will affect us, our children and our grandchildren in ways far more profound than the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We need different disciplines to bring together their best insights, tools and practices. Working together in new ways TARGet can harness the vast power of genomic insights to make genuine contributions to reducing AMR.”
Research programmes
The initiative is one of eight new networks, combining different research specialisms, which are working together to tackle AMR. They are funded by a total of £4.8 million from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), awarded as part of its tackling infections strategic theme. The programme will continue in 2025 with a new opportunity for new transdisciplinary research programmes, drawing on a dedicated budget of at least £7 million.
The networks will support diverse teams of AMR researchers, from specialists in agriculture, food and the environment to human and animal medicine, policy and behavioural studies, engineering, ethics and social science.
Dr Colin Miles, Head of Strategy, Advanced Manufacturing and Clean Growth at UKRI, said: “Tackling the creeping pandemic of antimicrobial resistance – increasing resistance to antibiotics – is a large, complex problem. Ten million people each year are expected to lose their lives to it by 2050.
“Rather than taking single-discipline approaches, we need researchers from across disciplines to come together and look at all aspects of the problem – from human behaviour and how we grow crops and rear animals for consumption to how we manage the environment or use technology, clinical management strategies or challenge established cultural norms.”