Bengaluru: The Centre for Cellular and Molecular Platforms (CCAMP), in collaboration with the UK department of health and social care’s Global AMR Innovation Fund (GAMRIF), announced nine winners of its AMR Challenge 2024-25. This initiative aims to tackle the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in environmental settings.
Launched in Aug 2024 under the India AMR Innovation Hub, the challenge received nearly 200 applications from startups and innovators across India. The selected winners will receive funding and ecosystem support to help scale, produce, adopt, and socially integrate their solutions.
Taslimarif Saiyed, director and CEO of C-CAMP, said the winning innovations address critical challenges in AMR, including point-of-care diagnostics, pathogen screening in farm, fishery, and hospital runoff, wastewater treatment, industry effluent management, and air decontamination in hospital settings.
By 2050, deaths associated with AMR are projected to rise to 10 million annually worldwide. Key contributors include climate change, antimicrobial misuse across the food and agriculture industries, and antimicrobial pollution due to poor waste management practices.
“The GAMRIF-CCAMP partnership aims to develop contextual solutions specifically for low and middle-income countries (LMICs) to help bend the AMR curve in environmental settings.
This collaboration positions CCAMP alongside major global AMR stakeholders in GAMRIF’s funding portfolio, such as Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator (CARBX) and Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP),” a statement issued here read.
The Winners:
■ Indian Institute of Science (IISc): MONZymes-based technology for degrading residual antibiotics from effluent wastewater through advanced (photo)catalytic activity.
■ Foundation for Neglected Diseases Research (FNDR): A cartridge-based device with a patented mixture of activated charcoal and plant-based materials to deplete antimicrobial residues from wastewater.
■ Biomoneta Research Pvt Ltd: qAMI (Quantitative Airborne Microbial Index), combining detection of airborne total microbial load and pathogenic microbes in hospital settings using an AI/ML platform.
■ DNOME Pvt Ltd: A pocket PCR device for rapid on-field detection of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resistance genes in aquaculture farms and wastewater sources.
■ Vividew Innovations Pvt Ltd: A novel combination of membrane filtration and advanced photocatalytic oxidation to remove residual antibiotics and resistant bacteria from hospital sewage treatment plants.
■ Diagopreutic Pvt Ltd: A colorimetric method for detecting residual antibiotics and pathogen identification in aquaculture farm effluents, based on differential nitroreductase activity.
■ Mylab Discovery Solutions Pvt Ltd: Rapid pathogen detection from wastewater using in-house nucleic acid extraction and multiplexed quantitative RT-PCR technology.
