Innovative Nuclear and Related Molecular Approaches for Detection and Characterization of Antimicrobial Resistance in Animal Production Environment

Antimicrobial resistance is an important global health concern and is considered to be a pandemic in silence causing more than one million deaths annually. Antimicrobial drugs are used in animals for therapeutic, prophylactic and growth promotion purposes. Emergence and transmission of AMR in animal production systems is a major issue, considering the fact that more than two-thirds of antibio tics sold globally are used on animals. A bulk of this is used as growth promoters for improving production efficiency. Hence, identifying effective alternatives will be an important approach to reduce antimicrobial usage in animal production settings. Further, national AMR surveillance programs have mostly focused on the detection of AMR in human health and in animals for food safety purposes, but not in animal production facilities. AMR surveillance in animal production settings is constrained by lack of (i) guidelines and harmonized sampling methodologies (ii) cost-effective technologies for AMR detection (iii) effective alternatives to antibiotic growth promoters and (iv) appropriate biosecurity measures to improve herd health and reduce the use of antimicrobials in farm animals. This project aims to enable developing member states (MSs) use innovative nuclear and related approaches for enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of national AMR surveillance programs and promoting good husbandry practices to mitigate AMR in animal production settings. Specifically, it aims to (i) develop, evaluate and validate farm-level sampling methods for detection of AMR in high and low-input animal production environments (ii) establish AMR distribution characteristics in high and low input animal production environments using nuclear, molecular and microbiological techniques (iii) assess the efficacy of alternatives to antibiotic growth promoters (AGPs) as feed additives in animal production settings (iv) establish scientific evidence on development and transmission of AMR at animal-human-environment interface (v) evaluate and optimize phenotyping and genotyping methodologies related to drug resistance in animal infections other than bacteria (vi) pilot and recommend good husbandry practices or antimicrobial stewardship that aim to reduce the risk of emergence and occurrence of AMR in farm animal settings. Three major animal production systems viz. pig, chicken and cattle will be targeted. Nuclear techniques like Raman spectroscopy based stable isotope probing (SIP) and stable isotope linked amino acids (SILAC) will be used to develop novel phenotyping and genotyping methods for AMR characterization. Isotopic methods involving 60Cobalt will be used to produce metabolically active but non-replicative bacteria as candidate para probiotic and potential alternative to antibiotic growth promoters. The project will run for five years and will involve 8 Research Contract (RC) holders from developing countries, three Technical Contract (TC) holders and three Research Agreement (RA) holders from laboratories engaged in high level research on AMR and One Health.