ICMR - National Institute for Research in Bacterial Infections
आईसीएमआर - राष्ट्रीय जीवाणु संक्रमण अनुसंधान संस्थान
Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India
स्वास्थ्य अनुसंधान विभाग, स्वास्थ्य और परिवार कल्याण मंत्रालय, भारत सरकार
To address rising antimicrobial resistance (AMR) across the country, the first National Antimicrobial Resistance Hub in India was established at ICMR-National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (ICMR-NICED) in 2019 and is funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research. As a foundation step of the hub, the National Repository of Antimicrobial Resistant Bacteria (NRAMRB) has been conceived to create a facility enabling multidimensional AMR research at pan India platform. The Collection now maintains over 450 strains of bacteria, both antimicrobial-resistant and virulent, representing a large percentage of the pathogenic species in the bacterial kingdom that have been cultured to date.
Novelty lies in the concept of developing a state-of-the-art facility at national level where representative bacterial isolates from different nodal centres of ICMR’s Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance and Research Network (AMRSN) will be preserved and made available to the researchers for undertaking further studies addressing AMR. This is going to be first centre of this kind in India.
This facility will have four functional pillars i.e., to preserve the nationally representative AMR bacterial isolates from nodal centres, to generate evidence by analysing data from AMRSN, subject to access & availability by ICMR, to provide authentic antimicrobial resistant strains to the researchers across the country, when certified by ICMR following SOP and to develop skilled manpower for AMR research through trainings/workshops.
The goal is to serve as a collection of highly characterized isolates that are accessible to government agencies, academic institutions, clinical and commercial laboratories, public health institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and biotech and diagnostic companies and other stakeholders.
Broad applications of the NRAMRB platform are anticipated to provide several benefits over the course of time, including, though not limited to, the following:
- Using drug resistance isolates as a resource for the verification and validation of novel diagnostic tests
- Use of isolates in studies for validation of detection of phenotypic susceptibility or molecular markers of resistance
- Aiding in the process of development of newer drugs and therapeutic modalities
- Vaccine development against clinically significant pathogens
- Development and validation of bioinformatics-based tools to develop algorithms to identify and/or predict putative antimicrobial resistance genes in clinical isolates
- Exploring the use of emerging technology, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to shorten the diagnostic lag period for infectious diseases
The facility will preserve highly characterized AMR strains from different geographical regions of India and thus provide an immensely useful platform to cater several advantages over the course of time in connection with controlling AMR. The National Repository is the first step to support the AMR Hub as envisaged to steer AMR research and generate evidence base for policy translation in India. In addition, the repository will be useful in periodic analysis and report generation from available data of AMRSN which will be helpful for antibiotic policy making at national as well as regional levels