HHS is awarding up to $104 million to a project to combat the growing threat of drug-resistant bacteria, which account for nearly 3.8 million infections a year in the U.S.
The effort will come through HHS' Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, known as ARPA-H, and will aim to develop diagnostic and experimental platforms to discover how antibiotic resistance starts, create new antibiotics, and support the ability to identify the right antibiotic to prescribe for an infection in real time, according to a Sept. 27 news release.
The project will complement other federal research on the matter but will take a unique approach to "develop an ultra-high-speed screening system that analyzes billions of bacteria individually." Ultimately, the goal is to provide hospitals and clinics with a platform that could be used to rapidly determine the right compound to treat a certain infection.
Researchers from multiple institutions are involved in the project, with Harvard Medical School in Boston at the helm. ARPA-H recently chose nearby Cambridge, Mass., where Harvard's main campus is located, to serve as one of the city hubs for a national health innovation network.