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Members of Parliament are suggesting that a Covid mega lab, which is currently listed for sale on Rightmove, should be repurposed as a research facility to aid in the fight against increasing antibiotic resistance.
The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory, located in Leamington Spa, began operations in June 2021. It was the UK’s initial mega lab for Covid-19 testing and handled approximately 8.5 million tests throughout the pandemic.
However, it unexpectedly closed in January 2023, causing surprise among the scientific and health communities. In November of last year, a bipartisan group of Members of Parliament noticed that the property was suddenly listed for sale.
According to them, the Government should utilize the facility, which has been funded with over £1 billion of public funds, to study phages, which are viruses that can kill bacteria. This could aid in addressing the issue of antibiotic resistance as bacteria develop resistance to medications.
Bacteriophages are typically non-threatening to humans, but can be lethal to bacteria.
They work by penetrating the bacterial membrane and replicating inside the cell until it bursts open, killing the bacterium.
In order to utilize phages for treating life-threatening illnesses, it is crucial to identify phages that are highly effective at eradicating the specific strains of bacteria responsible for the diseases.
The World Health Organization has classified antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as one of the most pressing global challenges to public health and development. According to the organization, bacterial AMR was the direct cause of 1.27 million deaths worldwide in 2019 and played a role in 4.95 million deaths.
On Wednesday, the Science, Innovation & Technology Committee of Parliament released a report stating that the UK is currently facing a standstill due to the fact that phages do not meet the necessary Good Manufacturing Process (GMP) standards required for use in clinical trials.
According to the report, meeting the GMP standards will require the establishment of new manufacturing plants for phages. However, investing in compliant plants will only be justifiable after successful clinical trials.
The licensing issue in the UK must be resolved in order for phages to be used as a life-saving treatment.
Chair of the committee, Greg Clark, stated that phages could potentially address the growing global concerns surrounding antimicrobial resistance.
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However, progress in the field of phage therapies has reached a standstill. Clinical trials require state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities, yet obtaining necessary investments hinges on demonstrating efficacy first.
The Committee is urging the Government to evaluate the potential use of the currently inactive Rosalind Franklin Laboratory in the West Midlands as a potential facility.
The Laboratory was created by the Government with the goal of addressing the insufficient testing capacity that greatly hindered the national response to Covid. It has received over £1 billion in public funding.
This facility was designed to provide modern and safe laboratory resources and serve as a crucial defense against future pandemics for our nation’s resilience.
The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory was unexpectedly listed for sale on the real estate site Rightmove, surprising those in the science and health fields.
The report from our Committee proposes that the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory be taken into consideration for this purpose, instead of being sold off and lost to both the nation and the scientific community.
The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory has unexpectedly been listed for purchase on the real estate site Rightmove, causing surprise among the scientific and medical communities.
For over a century, phages have been utilized as a form of treatment. However, they have not yet been officially approved for use as a therapy in the UK.
They have only been utilized as a last resort “compassionate” treatment in rare instances.
A 15-year-old girl with cystic fibrosis was diagnosed with a fatal bacterial infection and was given a survival rate of less than 1%. However, doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London were able to successfully treat her using a combination of three phages.
The Committee is urging collaboration between the Government, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), and phage experts to secure funding for phage research and obtain licensing for its products.
The MHRA is being encouraged to review the possibility of permitting the compassionate use of non-GMP phages produced in the UK for extreme medical situations. Additionally, they should reassess how current regulations would handle the responsibility of clinicians and hospitals that utilize these phages.
Professor Joanne Santini, who is based at the UCL Institute for Structural and Molecular Biology and assisted with the report, said: “The Covid pandemic has made us acutely aware of the threat that infectious agents pose to health and healthcare systems.
The excessive and improper use of antibiotics presents a more serious danger, as millions of people around the world are dying from infections caused by bacteria that are resistant to antimicrobial treatments.
Bacteriophages will play a crucial role in fighting against antimicrobial resistance.
Gathering evidence from both compassionate access use and clinical trials will be crucial to our successful utilization of phages.
In order to make this achievable in the UK, having well-defined regulatory guidelines, proper manufacturing facilities for producing GMP phages, and adequate funding will be crucial.
Source: independent.co.uk
