A US-UK public-private partnership will spend $350 million over the next five years to tackle antibiotic resistance.
The Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARB-X) will bring together partners including the US Department of Health and Human Services; the AMR Centre in Alderley Park, Cheshire; the Wellcome Trust in London; and Boston University, Boston, MA.
The US-based Biomedical Advanced Research Authority (BARDA), within the US Department of Health and Human Services, will provide $30 million in grants to CARB-X during the first year – and up to $250 million over five years.
The AMR Centre, a UK public-private partnership formed in 2016 to develop antibiotics and diagnostics, is expected to provide $14 million in year one – and $100 million in total over the next five years.
In addition to providing funding, the Wellcome Trust will bring expertise in overseeing high quality international research projects.
Boston University School of Law will host the CARB-X executive team which will include experts in antibiotic drug development, including John Rex, Senior Vice President at AstraZeneca.
On 1 January 2017, Barry Eisenstein (formerly of Cubist and currently at Merck) will join CARB-X.
The partnership has grown out of President Obama’s 2015 Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria (CARB) initiative.
A recent review for the UK government, led by leading economist Lord O’Neill, concluded that antimicrobial resistance has the potential to be responsible for 10 million extra deaths each year by 2050 – more than currently claimed by cancer – and reverse decades of advances in medicine.
The combination of its own resources and the contributions from CARB-X means that the AMR centre expects to be able to direct $200 million on a range of R&D projects. These financial resources will be used to help small and medium sized businesses progress their R&D projects into clinical trials.
'The creation of CARB-X is one of the most important steps yet in terms of rethinking how we deal with AMR and the partnership will have an impact around the world,' said Dr Peter Jackson, steering group chairman of the AMR Centre.
'We share the same goal of accelerating a new pipeline of treatments and diagnostics by working on new drug development programmes.
'We will do this in our own labs as well as in collaboration with other organisations, in particular providing support to small and medium-sized businesses and research institutes which have exciting new approaches to AMR.'
Some CARB-X projects will be developed at Alderley Park within the AMR Centre, but the funding could also benefit other companies and organisations.
The international partnership will support a suite of products through early preclinical development to a stage where they can be taken forward by private or public investment.
Dr Jeremy Farrar, Director of the Wellcome Trust, said: 'Drug-resistant infections are already costing lives all over the world.
'Many drugs that we have too often taken for granted no longer work, presenting one of the biggest threats to our future global health and economic security.
'A problem of this scale can only be tackled through coordinated international effort to curb our massive overuse of existing antibiotics, and to accelerate the development of new ones.'
Beginning in September, CARB-X will begin reviewing applications to determine the most promising products to fund.
Decisions will be made by its Scientific Advisory Board, with input from the agencies, including BARDA and NIAID, and the partners, including the AMR Centre and the Wellcome Trust.
Applicants should go to www.carb-x.org for updates.
