Participating in the UK Global Expert Mission ‘Antimicrobial resistance Germany’

It is my pleasure to share my experiences with the inspiring Global Expert Mission ‘Antimicrobial resistance Germany’. The objective of  the mission, which took place from 20-24 May of this year, was to explore the collaboration and innovation potential of the UK and Germany in the domain of #Antimicrobialresistance (#AMR) and to come up with follow-up actions and recommendations.  The mission was initiated by #InnovateUK  and conducted by the UK Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN). The delegates were all representatives of UK organisations including the British In Vitro Diagnostic Association (BIVDA), Destiny Pharma, Edinburgh Medical School, Oxford University, Summit Therapeutics, Innovate UK and KTN. #AMRInsights was invited to join the mission as the technical expert and writer of the report. 

Within a period of one week, we were able to meet with AMR stakeholders in Germany. To begin with we met with representatives of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research and the Ministry of Health in Berlin to better understand the German research funding system on AMR as well as DART, the overall German AMR Strategy. In Berlin we also got acquainted with the Global AMR R&D Hub. We met with delegates of the German Healthcare centers Charité (The Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin is Europe’s largest university clinic, affiliated with Humboldt University and the Free University Berlin). Later that week we visited the University Hospitals of Frankfurt and Jena to get an understanding of the German approach on AMR surveillance and antibiotic stewardship. With respect to AMR-related research: we were able to meet with representatives of the Fraunhofer Institut in Potsdam, the famous Robert Koch Institute in Berlin and the Leibnitz Institute of Photonic Technology. The visit to the research campus InfectoGnostics in Jena was extremely insightful and provided a good example of how public-private partnerships can help tackle AMR. In our meetings with Adrenomed in Berlin and AiCuris in Wuppertal we learned more about their research and development of novel antimicrobials. With respect to novel diagnostics the delegates met with representatives of ThermoFisher, Blink in Jena, Curetis, Bosch Healthcare and Qiagen in Hilden.  Other organizations we met with include the recently established German office of the Wellcome Trust, the German BioCom and, last but not least, the British Embassy in Berlin.

The pressure cooker program gave us an excellent overview of the current German activities related to tackling Antimicrobial resistance. All in all it can be concluded that the UK and Germany share the sense of urgency when it comes to the global threat of AMR. The delegation has identified a substantial number of highly interesting opportunities to collaborate and to jointly innovate. The German organizations expressed a clear appetite to join forces with the UK and with their UK counterparts.

The report of the Global Expert Mission Antimicrobial resistance Germany is currently being developed by AMR Insights in collaboration with KTN. The public report containing the short and longer term actions and recommendations to establish the anticipated collaborations will become available shortly. As soon as the report becomes available, we’ll report it to you on this information platform of AMR Insights.