GSK has announced that it will become the first founding partner of the Fleming Initiative, a new global network aimed at tackling antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
Responsible for an estimated 1.2 million deaths globally in 2019, AMR occurs when bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites change and find ways to resist the effects of antimicrobial drugs. As a result, infections become harder to treat and the risk of serious complications and death increases.
It is predicted that AMR, which has been declared by the World Health Organization as one of the top ten threats to global public health, could cause ten million deaths every year by 2050 unless action is taken.
Led by Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Imperial College London, the Fleming Initiative will bring together scientific, technology, policy and behavioural science expertise in a global network of centres to find, test and scale solutions for AMR, with efforts directed mainly at supporting countries that are most severely affected.
The first Fleming Centre will be based at St Mary’s Hospital in London, at the site where Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928.
GSK has made a $45m pledge to support the programme, with the company’s funding available for projects that use new technology to better interpret and use complex scientific data, identify new opportunities to develop novel treatments and interventions, study how drug-resistant infections are transmitted and can be prevented, and understand how better surveillance approaches could improve detection and tracking of infections.
GSK’s chief executive officer, Emma Walmsley, said: “The Fleming Initiative will bring together global resources and expertise from across different sectors to better understand the factors contributing to this growing threat and, most importantly, drive action and solutions.
“We are proud to be a founding partner and hope others will join us to support this urgent priority.”
The announcement comes just one week after the UK government launched a new five-year national action plan against AMR and gave $5m in seed funding to the Fleming initiative.
The commitments outlined in the plan include reducing the use of antimicrobials, strengthening the surveillance of drug-resistant infections before they emerge, supporting low- and middle-income countries to respond to the threat of AMR, as well as incentivising the development of new vaccines, diagnostics and therapeutics, including alternatives to antimicrobials.