海角社区-led Research Team Awarded $400K from G茅nome Qu茅bec to Counter AMR Threat
海角社区 team funded as part of a $4.5 million national investment dedicated to identifying genomic solutions to counter antimicrobial resistance and prepare for future pandemics
On November 20, G茅nome Qu茅bec announced $4.5M in funding for five research projects in Quebec under the Genomic Solutions for the Identification, Characterization and Monitoring of Antimicrobial Resistance and Emerging Pathogens program. A research team led by 海角社区鈥檚 Dominic Frigon and Paul Thomassin were awarded $400,000 from the program for the One Health Integrated Assessment Modeling of AMR by Incorporating Metagenomics into Surveillance initiative. The project will also receive $75K from the 海角社区 AMR Centre, and farm and retail meat samples from the Public Health Agency of Canada; Public Health Agency of Canada valuing $286K, as well as sequencing reagents in the value of $39K from PacBio. In total, this will amount to $800k in support of the project.
The research team includes co-investigators Professor Ioannis Ragoussis of 海角社区, and 脡milie B茅dard of l鈥橴niversit茅 Polytechnique and Fran莽ois Guillemette of l鈥橴niversit茅 du Qu茅bec 脿 Trois-Rivi猫res, as well as collaborators from the Public Health Agency of Canada and the University of Guelph.
鈥淓xamining and tracking how microbes migrate through our environment is a crucial element in solving the growing challenge of AMR,鈥� said Professor Martha Crago, Vice-Principal, Research and Innovation. 鈥淭his research will help the world better manage this threat and save precious lives. We appreciate the support of Genome Quebec in helping our researchers make a difference.鈥�
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global threat to animal and human health that is already killing 1.3 million people worldwide annually and is projected to eventually cause up to 10 million deaths by 2050, according to the United Nations Environment Program. However, current AMR surveillance approaches are limited because they are onerous and time consuming, and incapable of detecting dissemination mediated by non-pathogenic species.
Through the One Health project, Frigon and Thomassin propose to expand AMR surveillance using metagenomics (i.e., the study of genetic material recovered from all microbes present in an environmental or clinical sample) to produce data that could be tabulated for surveillance across a variety of natural biomes. This holistic understanding of the spread of disease is part of the One Health approach to public health threats such as AMR. Incorporating metagenomic data will allow the assessment of new pathways of dissemination, and a better understanding of the connections between sectors, for example between farming communities and urban populations.
鈥淭he AMR Multi-Stakeholder Partnership Platform, a joint initiative of The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), known as the Quadripartite, now promotes the One Health approach to curb the dissemination of AMR by putting together information from humans, livestock animals, the environment,鈥� said Frigon. 鈥淲ith this funding from G茅nome Qu茅bec, our project will allow the identification of critical control points of dissemination between these reservoirs to mitigate the spread of AMR and maintain the capacities of human and veterinary medicine.鈥�
"Funding such projects is a way to contribute to the creation of innovative solutions in response to the current epidemiological and public health risks in Qu茅bec,鈥� says St茅phanie Lord-Fontaine, Vice-President, Scientific Affairs at G茅nome Qu茅bec. 鈥淕enomics can indeed play a central role in understanding and countering antimicrobial resistance and emerging pathogens, notably through the development and creation of diagnostic tools and prevention measures, the development of surveillance capacity and the discovery of new treatments."