NAMRIP attend breakfast panel hosted by Stephen Metcalfe MP
Professor Leighton and NAMRIP manager Yvonne Richardson were invited to Parliament on 13 February 2019 to an event hosted by Stephen Metcalfe MP, chair of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee and member of House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.
The panel discussion was a launch of the UK’s new 20-year vision and 5-year National Action Plan (2019-2024) (the UK’s previous vision, the five-year Antimicrobial Resistance Strategy ran until the end of 2018, and was in part responsible for funding the formation of NAMRIP) and the UKRI Cross-Council Initiative on AMR.
The UKRI produced a booklet (downloadable below) which featured NAMRIP as a case study for success of the UK’s mission in combatting AMR.
There was a wide ranging discussion, including Professor Jonathan Van-Tam (Deputy Chief Medical Officer) and Dr Jonathan Pearce (Associate Director, Biological Medicine, Medical Research Council, Chair, AMR Funder’s Forum), covering the goals for 2040, the tactics (through stewardship, economic drivers, vaccination, new therapies and diagnostics, and monitoring etc.) and reflecting the One-Health approach that is core to NAMRIP’s philosophy.
Prof Leighton raised the issue of the need to consider what comes after every £1M research: if just research papers, it has limited impact on the 10–year window on how AMR impacts society; if it is followed by an engagement programme (talking to regulatory bodies etc.) this can be relatively inexpensive (£50k), but does not of itself drive the release of new products into the health service. Indeed, its relative cheapness might be a displacement activity from finding the £10-20 million needed to introduce a product into the health service, and Prof. Leighton asked how will this be done? If left to big pharma or Venture Capitalists, it is too slow and small a profit (Professor Chris Dowson from the University of Warwick spoke out to say this is why there are over 100 new anti-cancer drugs in production, but no new antibiotics; and a representative of a spin-out company said that his VC backers were driving his company away from antimicrobials and into anti-cancer products because of the lack of profit in AMR).
The meeting was closed by Professor Fiona Watt (Executive Chair of the Medical Research Council).
A full summary of the event can be downloaded below.