Two major infection research consortia have been established in London and Oxford to conduct collaborative research into nationally important areas including healthcare associated infections and antibiotic resistance.
A total of £9m has been jointly awarded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, Medical Research Council, National Institute for Health Research and the Wellcome Trust through a competitive process to establish the two consortia.
The Oxford consortium will focus on research to increase understanding of how infectious diseases are transmitted with the aim of improving control of their spread. It will exploit recent advances made in sequencing the genomes of bacterial and viral pathogens of public health concern, to improve and speed up their classification and identification. This should make it easier to track and deal with local outbreaks of infection, identify particularly virulent strains, and help to spot where infection control guidelines can be improved.
The London consortium, based at Imperial College, will address the challenge of healthcare-associated infection by conducting research into individual and organisational behavioural change, modelling, epidemiology, rapid diagnosis and surveillance of selected infectious diseases.
This is the first round of funding awarded under the UK Clinical Research Collaboration (UKCRC) Translational Infection Research Initiative, which aims to bring together new multi-disciplinary research groups focused on high quality collaborative research addressing national research priorities in the microbiology and infection field. A second round of funding under the initiative is schedule for award in later 2009.