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UK businesses can apply for a share of up to £10 million to work with partners in China on innovative approaches to dealing with antimicrobial resistance.

The Department of Health and Social Care, working with Innovate UK, has up to £10 million in Official Development Assistance funding to invest in UK-China research and development projects into antibiotic resistance.

Tackling drug-resistant infections

Failure to tackle growing drug-resistant infections could lead to an extra 10 million deaths a year worldwide and cost the global economy $100 trillion by 2050.

China has brought together 14 ministries, including health, food and drugs, and agriculture in a national effort to tackle antimicrobial resistance.

The Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology will invest up to 60 million RMB to fund the Chinese partners in this competition.

Find out more about how Innovate UK supports business research in health and life sciences.

Economic and societal benefit

Projects that could be funded under the competition include:

• combining antibiotics with traditional Chinese medicines and isolating the active components of these medicines
• discovery of new agents to tackle drug-resistant bacterial infections in animals and humans
• identifying new agents to increase feed energy conversion in livestock without using antibiotics or hormones
• maximising the effectiveness of current antibiotics
• improving diagnosis, surveillance and treatment of bacterial infections and antibacterial resistance

Projects must demonstrate that they are directly relevant to the needs of people in low and middle-income countries and provide a clear economic and societal benefit.

Competition information

• the competition is open, and the deadline for registration is at midday on 30 May 2018
• projects must be led in the UK by a business and include at least one UK academic organisation, one business based in China and one academic or research organisation based in China
• we expect UK project costs to be between £850,000 and £1.2 million and to last up to 36 months
• up to £750,000 will be available in grant funding for the UK partners in a consortium
• a briefing event takes place on 18 April 2018

Find out more about this competition and apply.