Project: VeRI BEAM

Acronym	VeRI BEAM (Reference Number: JPIAMR_2018_N028)
Duration	01/03/2019 - 30/06/2020
Project Topic	All recent reports establishing a roadmap to tackle the global, worldwide antimicrobial resistance (AMR) problem highlight the need to enlarge the current armamentarium beyond the sole “full antibiotic” model. Many efforts are being devoted to fulfil these needs both by academia and industry, as exemplified by the BEAM Alliance member portfolio (https://beam-alliance.eu/ba_pipeline). These new options include improved time-to-cure, anti-virulence, involvement of immune system, impact on flora, infection prevention, etc. both for animal and human medicine. However, while there is a clear path to Health Technology Assessment on antibiotic candidates (thanks to the EUCAST clinical breakpoint guidelines) no such established methodology is available for alternative antimicrobial treatments. Thus, any new treatment option faces the problem of lacking differentiation criteria to allow assessments of their products that do not have the possibility to be assessed by the classical MIC – PK/PD method. The clear definition of such criteria could benefit to the whole AMR research community. This uncertainty turns any such drug development into an undefined and risky market access condition. Consequently, private investors are reluctant to engage and to play a supporting role to pull-out promising candidates and bring them to the market. Most of the time, private companies learn or even co-build these requirements with (inter)national stakeholders, but this knowledge is rarely shared with e.g. academic labs or funding agencies, although it is of tremendous importance to anticipate pitfalls and avoid misuse of public funding. The purpose of the VeRI BEAM Network is to implement a pilot action aiming at defining i) the above mentioned differentiation criteria and ii) the proper way to share the gained knowledge among AMR community. The pilot action will be used to validate a more general and long-term communication flow within the future JPIAMR-VRI between academic labs, and industrial and institutional actors in a non-competitive manner with a focus on innovative product development. Such a workflow will be helpful in anticipating R&D pitfalls and avoiding misuse of public funding. For that purpose, the Network aims at: • Mapping the information needs both in terms of content and format expressed by academic and institutional actors; • Proposing an information workflow model; • Developing the differentiation criteria use case to challenge the foreseen model. The proposed communication workflow model will ensure building capacity and strengthening capability of JPIAMR-VRI members through knowledge exchange mainly on the non-scientific side, but including business skills such as regulatory frameworks, manufacturing policies, marketing, technology or policy development. This can be part of a more general Training Plan to be implemented at the whole JPIAMR-VRI level. Finally yet importantly, the work focusing on the definition of new differentiation criteria is fully aligned with the goal of producing scientific evidence for developing policy and guidelines.
Website	visit project website
Network	JPI AMR
Call	8th Joint Call of JPIAMR

Project partner

Number	Name	Role	Country
1	BEAM Alliance	Coordinator	France
2	Madam Therapeutics BV	Observer	Netherlands
3	MeMed Diagnostics Ltd.	Observer	Israel
4	Ultupharma AB	Observer	Sweden
5	Phico Therapeutics	Observer	United Kingdom
6	Arsanis Biosciences GmbH	Observer	Austria
7	Novabiotics Ltd	Observer	United Kingdom
8	Debiopharm International	Observer	Switzerland
9	Mutabilis SAS	Observer	France
10	AntibioTx ApS	Observer	Denmark
11	Centauri Therapeutics Ltd	Observer	United Kingdom
12	Pherecydes Pharma	Observer	France
13	Northern Antibiotics Ltd	Observer	Finland
14	BioVersys AG	Observer	Switzerland
15	Antabio SAS	Observer	France
16	AiCuris Anti-infective Cures GmbH	Observer	Germany
17	Deinobiotics	Observer	France
18	Polyphor Ltd	Observer	Switzerland
19	Gedea Biotech AB	Observer	Sweden
20	Vaxdyn SL	Observer	Spain
21	Akthelia	Observer	Iceland
22	Setlance srl	Observer	Italy
23	QureTech Bio AB	Observer	Sweden
24	Basilea Pharmaceutica International Ltd.	Observer	Switzerland
25	Immunethep SA	Observer	Portugal
26	Septeos SAS	Observer	France