A multimillion-pound research and development centre in Cheshire is to become a lead player in a new $350m (£265m) partnership which has grown out of an initiative launched by US President Barack Obama.
The AMR Centre, based at Alderley Park, was established in February 2016 to spearhead research into anti-microbrial resistance (AMR).
It is one of five organisations which will play a central role in CARB-X, a project which has evolved out of Obama's 2015 Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria (CARB) initiative.
CARB-X will coordinate R&D funding of at least $350m around the world over the next five years.
The AMR Centre is expected to receive up to $14m (£10.6m) in matched funding from CARB-X in year one - and $100m (£76m) in total over the next five years.
The combination of its own resources and the contributions from CARB-X means that the AMR Centre expects to be able to direct $200m (£152m) on a range of R&D projects.
"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 (pictured), 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 programs."
Antibiotic resistance already claims 25,000 lives a year in Europe, but fatality rates are expected to rise dramatically.
A recent review for the UK government, led by leading economist Lord O'Neill, concluded that AMR has the potential to be responsible for ten million extra deaths globally each year by 2050.
In addition to the AMR Centre, other partners involved with CARB-X are The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority; The Wellcome Trust; The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease; MassBio in Cambridge; The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and RTI international.
Charitable foundation The Wellcome Trust will also contribute funding along with its expertise.
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