In July 2019, the University of Oxford hosted an AIMday (Academic Industry Meeting Day) focused on Antimicrobial Resistance, in collaboration with the NIHR Community Healthcare MIC.
The event brought together 36 industry representatives (from across 19 innovative companies) and 40+ University of Oxford academics and clinicians (from across 19 university departments) to discuss the challenges being faced by industry in addressing AMR.
AIMdays offer a low barrier route for small companies to meet with our academic and clinical community. Small and medium-sized companies represented on the day included Astrego Diagnostics, GeneFirst, Ingenza and Summit Therapeutics. We were also delighted to welcome a good number of larger pharmaceutical companies (including Evotec, GSK & Thermo Fisher Scientific) and organisations such as AHSN North East & North Cumbria, Innovate UK and Release Life Sciences & Diagnostics.
"The AIMday enabled me to meet academics with research interests close to my own, but from departments I wouldn't usually interact with" - Alastair Parkes, Evotec.
The day was packed with opportunities for cross-disciplinary discussions and networking. There were 25 workshops and topics discussed including:
- Implementation and adoption of point of care tests
- Quantifying the effect of the immune system on the emergence of resistance
- Stewardship associated with the use of new antibiotics
- Access through the bacterial cell envelope for the development of new antibiotics
- Use of machine learning to enhance the efficacy of new antimicrobials
- Funding gaps in AMR research
“Excellent event! We received tangible, practical advice on some of the technical challenges we are facing for our early stage antibacterial programmes” – Ajay Mistry, Oppilotech