Medical Research Council Hopes To Build On UK / China AMR R&D Collaborations
Executive Summary
Financial grants are bringing UK and Chinese researchers together in bilateral collaborations to fight the growing global threat from antimicrobial resistance.
Building on earlier success stories, four major new China-UK research collaborations have been chosen to tackle antibacterial resistance thanks to an £8m investment by the UKRI AMR Cross Council Initiative through the Newton Fund and CNY36m from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).
The four grants have been allocated to four UK principal investigators who will each work closely with a Chinese research counterpart.
"We have a joint programming initiative for AMR to fund transnational projects aimed at reducing AMR but China is not a member of that group. By working in a bilateral setting with them we've established a connection." - MRC's AMR Program Head Jessica Boname
The projects were chosen by a joint British/Chinese panel. Each project has its focus and criteria and that will determine how interactions are made.
"The joint panel looked at the feasibility of what was being proposed and how they added value to what they could or couldn't do on their own, meaning added synergy, added benefit of the collaboration, and awarded the grants on that basis," Jessica Boname, the British Medical Research Council's program manager for AMR told Scrip.
"The various styles and modes will differ from project to project; some involve different access to data, others involve training to help groups improve research abilities by sharing knowledge, others involve work exchanges so younger researchers in the UK going to China and younger investigators in China going to the UK to gain experience and knowledge," Boname explained, adding that the latest collaboration project will start in January 2019.
Bilateral UK/China Teamwork On AMR
"We hope that this will produce on-going collaborations. But the timeframe of the actual awards differ, in that the Chines award is a four-year grant, while the UK award is for three years. So many of the proposals involve collecting and analyzing data on the UK side and then would continue to be resourced by the China grant," Boname said.
"If a project is promising we'd hope to leverage funding from other sources to continue research and development around them," she said in an interview.
Two of the new awards are a continuation and expansion of the collaborations established from the earlier 2016 China-UK AMR Partnership Initiative and which was decisive in altering Chinese policy on the use of antibiotics in agriculture.
An earlier UK-China antimicrobial research collaboration was pivotal to informing a ban on the use of the antibiotic colistin as a feed additive for animals in China.
The 2016 grouping resulted in research led by Professor Timothy Walsh of of Cardiff University and the team of his counterpart Dr Yang Wang of the China Agricultural University being able to influence the Chinese government to the point that it banned use of the antibiotic colistin as a feed additive and growth promoter for animals in China.
"That removed 8,000 tonnes of colistin from the agricultural system in China, which is huge," Boname said.
Led To Chinese Colistin Agricultural Ban
That policy change resulted from Walsh's team and that of his Chinese counterpart identifying a gene called MCR-1 that allowed bacteria to survive colistin treatment in animals and humans in China.
MCR-1 is a ‘mobile gene’ meaning it can be easily transferred to other bacteria, making them resistant too. The team identified the gene in a strain of bacteria called Escherichia coli that was found in pigs.
Colistin is an important ‘last resort’ antibiotic, used to treat serious bacterial infections in humans resistant to other antibiotics. It is also used in animal feeds to help rear healthy animals. But widespread use of the antibiotic encourages the development, and spread, of resistance genes in animals, and subsequently humans, making them resistant to this potentially life-saving drug.
Following their discovery, the team worked with the Chinese government to discuss the risks and impact of MCR-1 on both colistin use in animals, and humans in China. Newton funding secured in July helped the team to keep up the momentum of these discussions. On July 26, the Ministry of Agriculture released a formal announcement regarding the ban of colistin as a growth promoter (feed additive) in animals in China.
Its withdrawal from the Chinese veterinary sector saw its replacing by other non-human antibiotics, supplemented by traditional Chinese medicines.
The UK / China collaborators and their backers hope that swift action by the Chinese government will reduce the spread of colistin-resistance and prolong the effectiveness of colistin as a vital treatment option for highly resistant bacteria.
The European Medicines Agency has since taken a positive step to update its advice on reducing the use of colistin in European veterinary practices.
Boname said collaborations established under the 2016 China-UK AMR Partnership Initiative have continued. The fact that the new scheme is larger also indicates the pioneering bilateral framework was a viable model.
"This puts us now on a firmer footing with our Chinese partners in terms of funding, being able to expand out ambitions and being able to look more broadly at the remits."
"We were much more medically focused in the first round, and now it's much more extensive, looking more at environmental challenges and the so-called one health agenda for AMR and bringing in behavioral practices which is something that China's NSFC doesn't normally fund," Boname said.
The British/Chinese bilateral collaboration initiatives are a continuation of UK efforts to push antimicrobial resistance to center stage in world health policy.
Building On O'Neill Report
According to the Jim O’Neill Review on Antimicrobial Resistance, a British initiative that has received close inspection by governments and policymakers, China uses around half the antibiotics consumed worldwide. Of these, 48% are consumed by humans and the rest is used in food-producing animals. The report suggests that AMR could cause a million premature deaths per year by 2050 in China alone. (Also see "Brits Lead Charge In Global Battle Against Antimicrobial Resistant Superbugs" - In Vivo, 20 Jun, 2018.)
The extensive O'Neill report was instrumental in persuading China’s leadership to include the issue of antimicrobials on the global agenda for the 2016 G20 summit there.
"Increasing our work with partner countries is part of our strategy. We have a joint programming initiative for AMR to fund transnational projects aimed at reducing AMR, but China is not a member of that group. By working in a bilateral setting with them we've established a connection," Boname concluded.
Newton Fund/NSFC Explained
The UK's Newton Fund money is classed as official development assistance (ODA) and is managed by the UK's Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and delivered through 7 UK delivery partners. It has a total UK government investment of £735m.
China's NSFC is an institution directly under the jurisdiction of the State Council to administrate the Natural Sciences Fund in accordance with the Chinese government's strategies and plans for the development of science and technology.