JPI AMR announces second call

The Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPI AMR) has announced details of its second transnational call for research projects. The research opportunity is encouraging collaboration between scientists in Europe and Argentina to help overcome antimicrobial resistance.

Funding worth €7m is available concerning the research topic of: ‘Repurposing of neglected antibiotics and characterising antibiotics or antibiotic and non-antibiotic combinations to overcome bacterial antibiotic resistance’. According to JPI AMR, the call aims to increase defence against AMR by examining the use of Neglected and Disused AntiBiotics (ND-AB). Additionally, devising mixtures of ND-AB and antibiotics as well as ND-AB and non-antibiotics will also be encouraged; it is hoped that this will “reduce [the] occurrence of resistance or overcome established resistance”.

JPI AMR hopes the call will help to “repurpose ND-AB” and help facilitate the identification and knowledge of the interaction between ND-AB and other antibiotics or non-antibiotics used in medical situations. This will hopefully lead to “finding combinations avoiding selection for resistance”, according to the initiative.

The financing for the call is available from nine funding agencies, including the Argentinian Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation, the Research Council of Norway, French National Research Agency and the Italian Ministry of Health. The call will open and be published in full on 17 March 2015. It will run until 12 May, with the successful applicants announced in November. More details can be found here.