Two projects led by Imperial College London researchers have been awarded funding from a substantial £54 million joint UK government and UKRI investment. This initiative is designed to address pressing biosecurity threats impacting human, animal, and plant health across the nation.
The investment, coordinated by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) with co-funding from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC), will support 18 new research and innovation projects throughout the UK. These projects will focus on critical areas such as epidemic preparedness, antimicrobial resistance (AMR), and the development of next-generation veterinary vaccines.
The scale of these threats is considerable. Globally, approximately one in six laboratory-confirmed bacterial infections in 2023 exhibited resistance to antibiotics. In Britain, ash dieback alone is estimated to incur costs of around £15 billion. Furthermore, mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, Zika, and chikungunya have resulted in global costs of at least $94.7 billion between 1975 and 2020.
One of the funded projects is CARMA: The Coselection of Antimicrobial Resistance by Metals Alliance, led by Professor Shiranee Sriskandan. This project, funded under the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) stream, will investigate how environmental changes, such as exposure to heavy metals, may drive the development and spread of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria. It aims to understand how non-antibiotic pollutants can contribute to the selection of resistant bacteria and their potential transmission to humans.
The CARMA project involves collaboration between researchers from Imperial College London's Centre for Bacterial Resistance Biology, Durham University, the University of Birmingham, Pondicherry University, and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. Their work will focus on identifying environmental conditions that promote metal co-selection of AMR, assessing the possibility of gene transfer between environmental and disease-causing bacteria, and understanding its contribution to the ongoing healthcare AMR crisis.
Professor Shiranee Sriskandan stated, "We need to understand how new highly resistant bacteria end up in healthcare. AMR genes are not man-made - they can move between bacteria and be shuffled around on the same bits of DNA as metal resistance genes; fieldwork in the environment shows this is happening. We want to prevent these clusters of resistance genes spreading from environmental bacteria to bacteria that can live in humans and creating new AMR clones. Understanding how to do that is a challenge. Limiting or cleaning up sewage contamination might be one solution, but we also need to understand the extent to which use of metals in farming or healthcare might pose a risk in propagating AMR from the environment to the clinic."
The second project, fAMR-AIR: A One Health Research Programme to Confront Airborne Fungal Antimicrobial Resistance, is led by Professor Matthew Fisher. This programme, also funded by the AMR stream, will identify factors contributing to the emergence of airborne fungal antimicrobial resistance hotspots within the UK.
The fAMR-AIR team will map the locations of these resistance 'hotspots' across UK farms, composting sites, and homes, and will test practical methods for their reduction. Working collaboratively with farmers, the composting industry, regulators, and patient groups, the project aims to co-develop an action plan to manage the rise of airborne fungal resistance.
Professor Matthew Fisher commented, "Fungal drug resistance is a hidden side of the antimicrobial resistance crisis. The same chemicals that protect our crops are undermining the drugs that protect our patients, and resistant spores are already in the air we breathe. This funding lets us move from documenting the problem to fixing it, by working with farmers, composters and policymakers to find solutions that safeguard both food security and human health."
Both Imperial projects fall under the AMR funding stream, which has a total budget of £15.5 million, co-funded by UKRI, NIHR, and Defra.
The broader £54 million investment integrates expertise from various fields, including biology, public health, social science, artificial intelligence, environmental research, and veterinary science, adopting a 'One Health' approach that acknowledges the interconnectedness of human, animal, and environmental health.
Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith, UKRI Executive Champion for Tackling Infections and BBSRC Executive Chair, highlighted the investment's significance: "This investment reflects UKRI's central role in delivering government priorities and our long-standing commitment to convening and working with partners across government to fund vital One Health research into human, animal, and plant health. By pooling expertise from across the research and innovation ecosystem in the UK and globally, we can tackle related infectious disease challenges in a more coordinated way to get ahead of emerging biological threats and help protect people, animals, plants and the environment, both in the UK and internationally. Ultimately, it will advance knowledge, improve lives, and drive growth."
The £54 million investment is distributed across three funding streams: Epidemic Preparedness (£25.6 million), Antimicrobial Resistance (£15.5 million), and Veterinary Vaccinology (£13.1 million). This funding is expected to generate new knowledge, tools, and technologies to enhance the UK's and international capacity for preventing and responding to future biological threats, facilitating earlier detection of emerging risks and informing policy decisions with better evidence.
