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GSK has announced that it has pledged £45m to the Fleming Initiative, becoming the first founding partner of the innovative and collaborative approach to tackle antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The initiative is led by the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and Imperial College London, UK, and intends to ‘bring together world-class scientific, technology, policy and behavioural science expertise with clinical experience in a global network of centres to find, test and scale solutions to AMR’, according to the company’s press release.

GSK’s £45m is intended to be used on approved projects that aim to utilise new technology, such as artificial intelligence (AI) to better understand and use complex scientific data, identify new treatment options, understand how surveillance approaches can improve detection of infections, and improve our understanding of how drug-resistant infections are transmitted, as well as how they can be prevented.

There will also be a strong focus on diagnostics, education and public engagement to reduce AMR, with a particular emphasis on countries most severely impacted by AMR where poverty, climate change and health inequality exacerbate the issues it can cause.

Emma Walmsley, chief executive officer of GSK, commented: “This will be an important collaboration for GSK building on our longstanding commitment to tackling AMR and our focus on disease prevention. The Fleming Initiative will bring together global resources and expertise from across different sectors to better understand the factors contributing to this growing threat and most importantly, drive action and solutions. We are proud to be a founding partner, and hope others will join us to support this urgent priority.”

Professor Tim Orchard, chief executive of Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, said: “Antimicrobial resistance remains one of the biggest challenges we face in the NHS and other healthcare systems around the world. The support of a global biopharma company with a proven history in treatment for infectious disease is a major boost to our goal to find new solutions and interventions for tackling drugresistant infections. The Fleming Centre, based at our St Mary's Hospital, where Sir Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin nearly 100 years ago, will be at the heart of the Initiative and part of a rapidly growing ecosystem of research and innovation that will benefit both local and global communities.”