This Industrial Innovation Fellowship will design and validate a new method to quantify the environmental risk posed by antibiotics and antimicrobials.

Focusing on the potential for antibiotic compounds to select for antimicrobial resistance (AMR), the data and methodologies generated will be applicable to the environmental surveillance of AMR, and to the development of novel antibiotics.

It will involve review of experimental methodologies, prioritisation of study compounds, and the collection of environmental samples.

AMR is one of the greatest threats to modern society, both socially and economically. Antibiotics and antimicrobials are used in a variety of settings, but ultimately they end up in the environment.

Yet very little is known about the risk of these compounds and whether they can enrich for antimicrobial resistant bacteria once in the environment.

This research will generate the largest database to date that can be used for environmental risk assessment. It will inform new safe release limits of antibiotics and antimicrobials to prevent further enrichment and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance.

This project is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council with support from AstraZeneca, Defra, and Severn Trent.