Pathways to Antimicrobial Clinical Efficacy (PACE) has announced its first partnership with the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to support the development of new antimicrobials to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
The new project will leverage the UKHSA’s Open Innovation in AMR platform to help generate new scientific breakthroughs.
Founded last year by LifeArc, the Medicines Discovery Catapult and Innovate UK with £30m in funding, PACE aims to remove the barriers and connect the AMR research and development (R&D) ecosystem to accelerate the preclinical pipeline.
Designated as one of the top ten global public health threats by the World Health Organization (WHO), AMR occurs when bacteria, fungi and parasites change and adapt to antibiotics over time.
The project aims to deliver a unique experience for PACE innovators to address the gap in supporting R&D in the early preclinical space and will help to strengthen the UK’s position as a global leader in life sciences in the effort to combat AMR.
The partnership will utilise the UKHSA’s AMR platform to support the evaluation of new antimicrobial candidates from other PACE-funded projects to create new scientific breakthroughs, while PACE aims to help advance a diverse pipeline of preclinical projects to treat bacterial infections with high unmet needs.
All successful PACE projects will gain access to the UKHSA’s facilities to test panels of clinical strains of bacteria, which will be expanded to provide additional bacterial strains that portray the challenges faced by clinicians in the UK and internationally.
The partnership aligns with the UK government’s five-year national action plan announced in 2019 to support the UK’s 20-year vision for AMR.
Professor Mark Sutton, a scientific leader at UKHSA and professor for antimicrobial therapy, said: “This partnership will help us to address [AMR]… as we work to generate new antimicrobial leads and solutions for clinical development.”
Dr Clive Mason, programme director at PACE, said: “This collaboration will not only deliver on the UK government’s immediate requirements set out in its national action plan; the insights we gain will provide further opportunities for future projects as the world looks to new AMR discoveries, ultimately contributing to better patient outcomes on a global scale.”