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Awardees Announced for the Vivli AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge, funded by Wellcome

Awardees Announced for the Vivli AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge, funded by Wellcome

Vivli is pleased to announce the awardees of the Vivli Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge. This initiative comes at a crucial juncture, with the World Health Organization (WHO) identifying Antimicrobial Resistance as one of the top 10 global health threats facing humanity. Alarmingly, antimicrobial-resistant infections have the potential to become the leading cause of death worldwide by 2050. In response to this pressing issue, Vivli and Wellcome joined forces in mid-2022 to launch the AMR Register, a novel platform featuring industry datasets, consolidating surveillance data for the benefit of researchers.

The AMR Data Challenge, funded by Wellcome, was launched in April 2023, as a catalyst for innovation and support for the inventive reutilization of the wealth of surveillance data available within the AMR Register.

“The AMR data challenge not only reflects the extensive interest but also underscores the significance of making AMR data readily accessible to investigators. Data serves as a catalyst for innovative approaches, which are essential in addressing the global AMR challenge,” said Arjun Srinivasan, MD. CAPT, USPS, Deputy Director for Program Improvement Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, CDC.

A total of 56 teams from 28 different countries participated in the AMR Data Challenge. This event served as a unique platform for multidisciplinary teams to leverage high-quality industry AMR surveillance data, proposing groundbreaking advancements and tools for use in AMR surveillance. The Challenge culminated in the recognition of six outstanding winners for the AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-Use Data Challenge.

The Grand Prize was awarded to Dr. Fredrick Mutisya, Health Data Scientist & Medical Doctor of Narok County, Kenya, and Dr. Rachael Kanguha, Pediatrician, Chuka County Referral Hospital, Kenya. Their groundbreaking work involved training machine learning models on the Pfizer ATLAS datasets and the development of a novel artificial intelligence web application capable of predicting antibacterial/antifungal susceptibility. Dr. Mutisya expressed his team’s commitment to AMR and highlighted the importance of providing equitable data accessibility to scientists from his region,

“Our team feels incredibly privileged to have participated in such a meaningful data challenge. Winning the grand prize not only fills us with a profound sense of fulfilment but also ignites a stronger motivation within us to continue seeking solutions for global issues, especially in combating antimicrobial resistance,” he said. “We are deeply grateful to Vivli for providing a platform that facilitates data accessibility. This is particularly significant for scientists like us hailing from the Global South, where opportunities like these are often scarce.”

Other notable awardees and their project titles include:

  • Impact Award Winner: Quentin Leclerc, Institut Pasteur, “Stronger together? Potential and limitations of combining industry datasets to fill in global AMR surveillance gaps.”
  • Impact Award Winner: Yanhong Jessika Hu, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, “Global Geographic Patterns and Trends of WHO Priority Pathogens and AWaRe Antibiotic Resistance Among Children: amrinkids.com.”
  • Innovation Award: Robert Beardmore, University of Exeter, “Are antibiotic breakpoints globally consistent, and does it matter if not?”
  • Innovation Award Winner: Shraddha Karve, Ashoka University, “Novel approach to antibiogram analysis: looking at the composite resistance phenotype.”
  • Innovation Award Runner-up: Jacob Wildfire, LSHTM/SGUL, “Analysis of variations in minimum inhibitory concentration distributions by patient group.”

Data contributed by GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Paratek, Pfizer, Shionogi, and Venatorx was made accessible through the AMR Register, significantly enhancing the impact of the Challenge.

Prof. Marc Mendelson, Chair of the Vivli AMR Scientific Advisory Board, Professor of Infectious Diseases and Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases & HIV Medicine, Groote Schuur Hospital, University of Cape Town noted the exceptional quality of the Challenge applications,

“The quality of applications for the Vivli AMR surveillance Open Re-use Challenge was excellent and it is particularly exciting to see the innovative approaches used,” he said. “Ensuring open access to data across the spectrum of private and public sources is a fundamental key to driving innovation towards a better understanding of AMR and the mitigation of this global health crisis.”

Patricia Bradford, PhD, Antimicrobial Development Specialist and a member of the Judging panel spoke of the innovation of the solutions and their impact, “It was exciting to see the creativity of the various teams with regards to novel uses for the susceptibility data generated by the pharmaceutical industry.  Our hope is that these efforts will better enable patient care and foster antimicrobial stewardship on a local level.”

Alisa Serio, PhD, Executive Director of Microbiology and Nonclinical Development at Paratek Pharmaceuticals Inc. was impressed by the innovative approaches taken by the participating teams and noted, “The outputs of this challenge are exactly what the Vivli AMR initiative was set up for, specifically to openly share surveillance data for researchers to investigate a myriad of questions in AMR to help further understanding, decision-making and policy changes worldwide.”

For more details and to view the winning teams’ solutions, please visit https://amr.vivli.org/data-challenge/finalist-and-award-winning-solutions.

Contact: Catherine D’Arcy, Rebecca Li


About Vivli
Vivli is a non-profit organization working to advance human health through the insights and discoveries gained by sharing and analyzing data. Data sharing initiatives include the AMR Register for AMR surveillance data and the Vivli Platform for clinical trial data. Vivli acts as a neutral broker between data contributor and data user and the wider data sharing community. For more information, visit www.vivli.org and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @VivliCenter.

Breaking News– Vivli announces the AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-use Challenge, funded by Wellcome, to Initiate April 19th

Vivli is launching the Vivli AMR Surveillance Open Data Re-use Challenge, funded by Wellcome, on 19th April 2023. The data challenge aims to stimulate and support the innovative re-use of surveillance data available in the AMR Register.

This Challenge provides an opportunity for multidisciplinary teams to win prizes by using high-quality industry AMR surveillance data to answer pressing research questions. The data will be shared through the AMR Register.

A series of prizes can be won by research teams from any discipline who find new insights in the data and contributes to the fight against antimicrobial resistance.

What prizes can be won?
There are five monetary awards:
• Grand Prize Award – $20,000
• 4 awards – $10,000 (each) in the categories of Innovation and Impact

Winning teams will additionally be provided with funding towards expenses for ECCMID 2024 if an abstract is accepted.

Sign up to the data challenge Slack Channel to be notified when the challenge is open and to keep updated about the latest information and details about this data challenge.

What’s involved?
On April 19, 2023, teams will be invited to register and submit a short summary of the research they intend to undertake with the data (and Expression of Interest or EOI). The EOIs will be reviewed and teams will be given access to the data for a 30-day window, during which solutions must be submitted.

These submissions will be reviewed by a panel of judges and finalists selected. Finalists will have the opportunity to pitch their idea to a panel of judges via Zoom and the prize winners will be chosen.

Winners will be invited to submit a project abstract to ECCMID 2024.

Rebecca Li speaks at Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy event

Vivli Executive Director, Rebecca Li, spoke at the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy event entitled “Data Capture to Measure, Track, and Improve Antibiotic Use” on March 2nd. She took part in the panel discussion for ‘Policy Approaches to Improve Data Capture for Antibiotic Use’ which discussed the need for the expansion of programs to capture antimicrobial resistance surveillance data, and the barriers stakeholders encounter in gathering evidence for novel antibiotics.

Vivli Executive Director Dr. Rebecca Li Speaking at the PACCARB September Public Meeting (Innovation Spotlight)

Vivli’s Executive Director, Dr. Rebecca Li, spoke at The Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (PACCARB) Public Meeting on September 13th for the Innovation Spotlight, on the topic “AMR Register – An Innovative platform for sharing industry surveillance data”. Dr. Li spoke alongside other companies with innovations in antimicrobial resistance. View Dr. Li’s slides here.

This meeting of PACCARB aimed to “identify key issues and critical policy gaps through a series of facilitated discussions examining a hypothetical large-scale disease outbreak scenario based on historic examples and estimates of future AMR outbreaks.”

Further information about the meeting can be found here.

Watch the AMR Register Launch

The AMR Register launched on on Tuesday, June 21, 2022 at 10:00ET | 15:00 BST 

The meeting agenda included:

  • Introduction to the AMR Register
  • Demonstration of the search and request process for the AMR Register
  • Statements from industry data contributors
  • Question and answer session

Watch today!

View slides here

Groundbreaking Data-Sharing Initiative Launches to Increase Understanding of Antimicrobial Resistance

Leading biopharmaceutical companies join Vivli’s new global register to accelerate research into antibiotic resistant bacteria

Cambridge, MA –The Antimicrobial Resistance Register, unveiled today by the nonprofit organization Vivli, makes it possible for biopharmaceutical companies to share susceptibility data on infection causing pathogens for the first time ever in one online platform, marking a critical step in combating the growing global health threat of antimicrobial resistance. With the active participation from leading pharmaceutical and biotech enterprises, researchers will be able to use the AMR Register to translate masses of antimicrobial resistance surveillance data into meaningful action that saves lives and preserves antibiotics for future generations.

Infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant bacteria are on the rise after years of overprescribing antibiotics. Now, illnesses that were once easily treatable with antibiotics are becoming more difficult to cure, and infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria cost billions in avoidable healthcare dollars. According to latest figures from the GRAM report, almost 5 million people died worldwide with an antimicrobial resistant infection. If left unchecked, the scale of antimicrobial resistance will quickly outpace what we have experienced with COVID-19, with deaths rising to 10 million per year by 2050, according to the United Nations.

Biopharmaceutical companies routinely conduct surveillance on all new antimicrobials to monitor susceptibility to pathogens of interest, generating large volumes of high-quality data. Currently, there is no easy way for researchers to access this raw data or combine and analyze multiple datasets from industry. The AMR register will make it easy for biopharmaceutical organizations to securely share their data with researchers, national governments, and multi-lateral organizations such as the United Nations, CDC and the World Health Organization. With robust, reliable industry data, all accessible in one place, scientists will be able to better map key patterns of resistance and identify the emergence of new antibiotic resistant pathogens. Research insights will also inform decision-making around use of antimicrobials, shape policies aimed at halting the spread of resistant pathogens, and spur innovation around new antimicrobial drugs.

“Our understanding of how to control antimicrobial resistant infections and how best to protect human health hinges on better access to surveillance data. Now, with the AMR Register we have an early warning system for one of the greatest public health threats we face,” said Chair of the AMR Register Scientific Advisory Board Marc Mendelson, PhD, Professor of Infectious Diseases and Head of the Division of Infectious Diseases & HIV Medicine at Groote Schuur Hospital, University of Cape Town. “Biopharmaceutical company data is a vital missing link in AMR surveillance, making the research enabled by the AMR register critical to mitigating the AMR pandemic and protecting the effectiveness of antibiotics, now and in the future.”

Companies that have committed to contributing their data to the AMR Register include Pfizer, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Paratek Pharmaceuticals, Shionogi & Co., Ltd., and Venatorx Pharmaceuticals.

In 2016, over 100 biopharmaceutical companies and trade associations signed The Davos Declaration on Antibiotic Resistance and later released the Industry Roadmap for Progress on Combating Antimicrobial Resistance ahead of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) High-Level Meeting on Antimicrobial Resistance, committing to sharing surveillance data to make it accessible to public health bodies and healthcare professionals. With the AMR Register, industry can now fulfill those commitments, helping contain the risk of AMR and advance scientific knowledge.

“We need urgent action to avert a wave of antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” said Vivli’s Executive Director Rebecca Li, PhD. “By making data openly available, industry is making a crucial contribution to furthering science and helping us get ahead of the next pandemic.”

The AMR Register is guided by a Scientific Advisory Board of influential leaders in antimicrobial resistance and global health, including Henry Kajumbula, MD of Makerere University College of Health Sciences; Trudie Lang of the Nuffield Department of Medicine; Marc Mendelson, PhD, of Groote Schuur Hospital, University of Cape Town; Arjun Srinivasan, MD, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Janet Midega, PhD, from Wellcome; and Andy Stergachis, PhD, of the University of Washington. The AMR Register was made possible with an initial seed grant from the Wellcome Trust.

Learn more at www.amr.vivli.org

Statements from AMR Register Members and Supporters

FROM GSK

“Antimicrobial resistance poses a profound threat to lives and livelihoods around the world. Getting ahead of this threat needs action on many fronts – from using existing antibiotics wisely to researching potential new antibiotics; and deploying vaccines to help prevent infection,” said John Billington, head of health security policy and advocacy at GSK. “Surveillance and data-sharing are central to these efforts. The AMR Register will help build our collective understanding of how pathogens are evolving and what is needed to outwit them. Building on GSK’s commitments to data transparency, we are pleased to support the AMR Register by sharing data from our long-running SOAR study, which tracks community-acquired respiratory infections.”

FROM MERCK (known as MSD outside of the United States and Canada)

“For more than two decades, Merck has been conducting ongoing surveillance as part of our global Study for Monitoring Antimicrobial Resistance Trends (SMART) program and working to make the data more widely available,” said Dr. Nick Kartsonis, senior vice president, vaccines and infectious diseases, Global Clinical Development, Merck Research Laboratories. “The launch of the AMR Register helps Merck take that commitment a step further, making this critical data even more accessible to partners around the world to help us all make faster, smarter, data-driven decisions in our collective fight against the urgent threat of AMR.”

FROM PARATEK PHARMACEUTICALS

“The Vivli AMR initiative aligns with Paratek’s core values and our commitment to support public and private partnerships that enable greater attention to the urgent and growing worldwide public health threat of antimicrobial resistance,” said Alisa W. Serio, PhD, Senior Director, Microbiology, Paratek. “The Vivli platform will be an immensely valuable resource for independent researchers, governments, and global organizations, where robust curated antimicrobial susceptibility data can be found in one place. It is our hope that this collaborative data-sharing effort helps drive further innovation, advances in antimicrobial stewardship practices and improved patient outcomes.”

FROM PFIZER

“Access to surveillance data and trends in antimicrobial resistance allows key decision makers to better adapt antimicrobial stewardship programs to help combat the spread of resistant pathogens,” said Pol Vandenbroucke, Chief Medical Officer, Pfizer Hospital. “At Pfizer, we are driven by our desire to improve global public health and are encouraged to see the collective action the industry is taking to help curb the growing threat of AMR. As the first company to provide open-access to raw surveillance data through our innovative ATLAS surveillance program, Pfizer has a longstanding commitment to antimicrobial stewardship and so we are pleased to again lead the way as a founding contributor to Vivli’s AMR Register.”

FROM VENATORX PHARMACEUTICALS

“Venatorx has been conducting global surveillance of drug-resistant clinical isolates since 2018, as part of our efforts to support antibacterial drug development” said Greg Moeck, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, Microbiology at Venatorx. “Today, we are excited to announce, and be a part of, this significant collaborative initiative that will enhance and centralize access to high-quality AMR surveillance data across multiple datasets around the globe. Vivli’s AMR Register is vital to support educational and scientific communications on the AMR burden and emerging resistance, as well as global public health at large.”

FROM SHIONOGI & CO., LTD

“Centralized disclosure of antimicrobial surveillance data is very important from the drug-resistance-monitoring perspective.” stated Ms. Takuko Sawada, Director of the Board, Executive Vice President, Shionogi & Co., Ltd. “Shionogi believes that Vivli’s AMR Register is the essential initiative to address antimicrobial stewardship and expansion of AMR on the global level.”

FROM WELLCOME TRUST

“Covid-19 has demonstrated the importance of high quality, readily accessible data to all elements of an effective public health response,” said Tim Jinks, Head of Infectious Disease Intervention at Wellcome. “Drug-resistant infections are no exception. The Antimicrobial Resistance Register will play a critical role in providing open-access data that supports identifying both the emergence of new antibiotic resistant pathogens and where they are spreading. This has a breadth of benefits, including informing the stewardship of existing antimicrobials and guiding the innovation of new treatments, diagnostics and vaccines.”

About Vivli

Vivli is a non-profit organization working to advance human health through the insights and discoveries gained by sharing and analyzing data. Data sharing initiatives include the Antimicrobial Resistance Register for AMR surveillance data and the Vivli Platform for clinical trial data. Vivli acts as a neutral broker between data contributor and data user and the wider data sharing community. For more information, visit www.amr.vivli.org and follow us on Twitter @VivliCenter.

About Wellcome

Wellcome supports science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone. We support discovery research into life, health and wellbeing, and we’re taking on three worldwide health challenges: mental health, infectious disease and climate and health.