The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) is taking strides to address significant global health threats by investing over $3 million into international collaborative research on antimicrobial resistance.
This funding will support Australian researchers’ participation in collaborative projects with international researchers through NHMRC’s international collaborative health research funding schemes.
The Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR) is an international collaborative organisation and platform that engages 29 nations and the European Commission to curb antimicrobial resistance with a ‘One Health’ perspective.
“NHMRC’s mission is to engage with collaborative research, and our global partners will foster Australian participation in international networks and collaborative health and medical research,” said NHMRC CEO, Professor Steve Wesselingh.
The NHMRC-JPIAMR 2024 transnational call on ‘Interventions Moving forward to Promote ACTion to counteract the emergence and spread of bacterial and fungal resistance and to improve treatments’ (IMPACT) aims to improve, compare, and evaluate the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and uptake of existing interventions against bacterial or fungal infections and/or design new interventions against fungal infections.
Among the recipients of NHMRC-JPIAMR funding announced today during ‘World Antimicrobial Resistance Awareness Week’ are:
- Associate Professor Aaron Elbourne from RMIT University is leveraging nanotechnology to pioneer advanced antimicrobial therapies to combat the threat of AMR fungal infections.
- Associate Professor Amy Cain is a Macquarie University researcher whose project will delve into the potential ability of metal-containing compounds to kill deadly fungi. This could lead to the development of new treatments for stubborn fungal infections.
- Dr Gerry Tonkin-Hill from the University of Melbourne will develop new genomic tools to improve our understanding of how candida fungus spreads between people and the environment and aims to discover new ways to combat fungal infections.
NHMRC’s funding provided through this JPIAMR call will support the Australian component of the collaborative partnership, while the international research partners will be funded by their respective funding agencies.
“Projects funded today as part of our international collaborative research scheme is a critical step towards addressing infectious diseases that have a global health impact, particularly with the rise of antimicrobial resistance,” said Wesselingh.
All funding details can be downloaded on NHMRC’s outcomes of funding rounds webpage.