£100 million to Fund Antimicrobial Research Institute at Oxford

An institute for antimicrobial research is to open at Oxford University following a £100 million donation from Ineos, one of the world’s largest chemical manufacturing companies. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been estimated to cause 1.5 million excess deaths each year, with associated projections reaching 10m deaths per year by 2050 and it is arguably the greatest economic and healthcare challenge facing the world post-Covid.

As the majority of global antibiotic consumption by volume is used for agriculture, the IOI will focus on designing novel antimicrobials just for animals, as well as exploring new human drugs. With aims to create partnerships with other global leaders in AMR, the Ineos Oxford Institute for Antimicrobial Research (IOI) critically will seek to attract and train the brightest minds in science to tackle this ‘silent pandemic’.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe, Chairman of Ineos said: “Innovative collaboration between industry, academia and government is now crucial to fight against AMR. Ineos in its 22 years has become the largest private company in the UK, delivering large-scale, ambitious technical projects with impactful results. We are excited to partner with one of the world’s leading research universities to accelerate progress in tackling this urgent global challenge.”

Surgeon David Sweetnam, Adviser to the IOI, said: “The growing menace of bacterial resistance to antibiotics is one of the most underreported issues of our time. All modern surgery and cancer treatments rely on the use of effective antibiotics. To lose this precious gift will signal a return to a pre-antibiotic era. We now have a very narrow window of opportunity in which to change course and prevent the unthinkable from becoming the inevitable.

“If there is any positive lesson to be taken from the devastation of the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve clearly seen that the only way out of such infectious disease crises is through brilliant scientific groundwork, laid well in advance. The vaccines which have been created in record time and which offer light at the end of the tunnel were developed using research conducted long before Covid-19 struck. It’s clear that we must be looking right now for new antibiotics with the same urgency as we have been for vaccines. The consequence of continued complacency doesn’t bear thinking about.”