Opened by BEAM Alliance Managing Director Frédéric Peyrane, the conference plenary explored the recently renewed political commitments on taking action on AMR – from Italy’s G7 presidency, the UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on AMR, the 4th AMR Ministerial Conference and the recent World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos.
The first day was packed with valuable presentations and panel discussions, partnering meetings and networking sessions.
There is significant international interest in Australia as a destination to conduct early-stage clinical trials, giving us a great opportunity to reinforce the strengths of Australia’s clinical trials ecosystem, our infrastructure, the quality of researchers and of course, the R&D tax incentive and the speed of start-up via the new Clinical Trial Notification (CTN) Scheme.
There was also a touch of Hollywood in the air with US actor Bill Pullman, star of blockbuster movies like ‘Independence Day’ and ‘While You Were Sleeping’ on set, gathering insights for his upcoming documentary on AMR. It was great to chat with Bill about the efforts being made in Australia and share the Global AMR Symbol badge with him.
The popular Startup Pitch Competition featured Australian interest with Ella Casale from Australia’s Elemental Therapeutics, a spin-out of the University of Melbourne Doherty Institute, showcasing its small molecule therapeutic designed to restore the efficacy of antibiotics. Always highly competitive, the eventual winner in a very close contest was SoundCell (Netherlands) for their rapid phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing device that detects bacterial resistance within just 1 hour. Using graphene-based sensors, it measures microscopic bacterial vibrations to determine if antibiotics are working in real time. Watch all the pitches at the INCATE website.
Always highly anticipated, CARB-X uses the conference to reveal its 2025 funding rounds. On the second day of the conference, CARB-X’s Chief of R&D, Erin Duffy, had a full house when she announced the themes for this year’s call as direct-acting small molecules for gram negative infections, and diagnostics for typhoid fever in low-resource settings.
It didn’t stop there though, with the breaking news that a new conference will go ahead in Washington DC from 30 September – 2 October 2025. The Global AMR Innovators Conference (GAMRIC) is being supported by CARB-X, ESCMID, the BEAM Alliance, GARDP, LifeArc, John Rex’s AMR Solutions and the WHO. Planned to be held annually, the conference’s location will alternate between the US, Europe and a low-middle-income country. Definitely one to put in the calendar.
Another new initiative outlined at the conference by Megan Neary from the Wellcome Trust is the Gram-Negative Antibiotic Discovery Innovator (Gr-ADI), a $50 million investment focused on combatting specific bacteria that are the leading contributors to AMR-associated deaths. The Gr-ADI will function as a consortium where multiple funders, research institutions, and industry partners share data and work collectively to drive innovation in the discovery of urgently needed new drugs.
A program highlight was a panel session featuring panellists from industry and payers analysing several pull incentive ideas, including a multi-country mechanism for the EU.
The conference wrapped up by delving into the challenge of how we can better communicate that AMR is a major global health threat – one that is making it increasingly difficult to treat common infections. No small challenge…and one that our network takes seriously.
The AMR Conference is a focused and productive meeting, and credit must go to the BEAM Alliance for creating such an inclusive and collaborative environment to help innovators accelerate their developments.
AAMRNet is looking forward to continuing to build on the European and international connections made as it delivers its strategic priorities of establishing an AMR-focused accelerator in Australia and securing investment in a pilot subscription fund for novel antimicrobials.
At the end of the day our network is all about helping to strengthen and sustain the pipeline of new antimicrobial technologies to ensure Australians have access to the latest and most effective life-saving antibiotics.
by Andrew Bowskill, AARMNet co chair and MTPConnect’s Director Stakeholder Engagement in Queensland