Antimicrobial drug resistance

Once easily mastered through the administration of antibiotics, severe bacterial infections are again on a sharp rise in Europe due to increasing resistance against available antibiotics. Hospitalised patients today run a significant risk of becoming infected by multi- or even pan-resistant infections against which virtually no drugs are effective. Lately, also community-acquired infections are becoming a serious concern with regard to drug resistance. At the same time, the drug development pipeline for new antibiotics is virtually empty due to lacking incentives for the pharmaceutical industry to invest in this field. In the longer term perspective, difficulties to effectively treat bacterial infections pose a threat to many modern diagnostic and treatment modalities, including advanced surgery and chemotherapy.

Research to combat the growing problem of antimicrobial drug resistance has been a high priority on the agenda of the EU Framework Programmes ever since the Microbial Threat Conference in Copenhagen in 1998. Ten years later and with more than 200 million € of EU support to research into antimicrobial resistance, Europe is in the lead to tackle drug resistance at broad fronts.

In the Seventh Framework Programme (2007-2013), antimicrobial drug resistance constitutes one of four areas in infectious diseases research. Contrary to the other three areas that target specific pathogens or groups of pathogens (the three poverty-related HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, the emerging [viral] epidemics and the neglected [tropical] infectious diseases), this pillar addresses a biological phenomenon rather than a specific group of pathogens. Care has been taken to avoid any overlap between the areas regarding for example multidrug-resistant (MDR)-HIV and MDR-tuberculosis, which are exclusively considered under the area "HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis". Although viral, fungal and parasitic drug resistance are not excluded in "Antimicrobial drug resistance", the vast majority of the resistance problems are found in bacteria which therefore constitute the bulk of the projects funded here.