An “inactivated” Covid mega-lab recently for sale on online asset site Rightmove will instead be used as a think tank to help tackle the growing risk of antibiotic resistance, MPs have said.
The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory in Leamington Spa opened in June 2021 and was the first Covid-19 testing mega lab in the UK, processing around 8.5 million tests during the pandemic.
But it closed in January 2023, to the “astonishment of the clinical and fitness communities”, and the assets “suddenly looked like they were for sale” in November last year, according to a cross-party organization of MPs.
They said the government instead deserves to use the facility, which has won more than £1 billion in public investment, to study bacteria-killing viruses called phages to fight antibiotic resistance as bacteria evolve to become resistant to drugs.
Phages are innocent to humans, but they can be deadly to bacteria.
They work by penetrating the bacterial membrane and replicating the mobile until it explodes, killing the bacteria.
The key to harnessing them in the remedy of deadly diseases is to locate phages that are incredibly effective at killing the strains of bacteria that cause them.
The World Health Organization has described antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as “one of the world’s major threats to public health and development,” stating that bacterial AMR is directly to blame for 1. 27 million deaths worldwide in 2019 and contributed to 4. 95 million deaths.
In its report published on Wednesday, the Parliamentary Committee on Science, Innovation and Technology said the UK is at an “impasse” because phages did not evolve according to the correct production procedure (GMP), the popular minimum a drugmaker will have. comply with their production procedures and therefore cannot be used in clinical trials.
However, in order to meet GMP criteria, phages will require new production plants, although investment in plants that meet the criteria will be justified after the success of clinical trials.
He said the UK must overcome the licensing impasse to allow the use of phages as a life-saving treatment.
Greg Clark, chair of the committee, said: “Phages offer one imaginable answer to the development of global considerations of antimicrobial resistance.
“But the development of phage therapies is at an impasse, in which clinical trials need new advanced manufacturing plants, but investment requires clinical trials to have demonstrated efficacy.
“The Committee asks the Government whether the Rosalind Franklin laboratory, suspended in the West Midlands, could provide adequate facilities.
“The lab, which has already won more than £1 billion in public funding, was set up through the government to end the lack of testing capacity that has so hampered the national response to Covid.
“These are safe and trendy laboratory facilities and were meant to be a vital source of national resilience in the face of long-term pandemics.
But the Rosalind Franklin lab was listed for sale on the online real estate site Rightmove, much to the astonishment of the clinical and fitness communities.
“The report of our phage committee calls for the Rosalind Franklin Laboratory to be thought of for this purpose, rather than to lose it to the country and science in a betrayal. “
The Rosalind Franklin Laboratory appeared for sale on online real estate site Rightmove, to the amazement of the clinical and fitness communities.
Greg Clark
Phages have been used for curative purposes for over a hundred years, but have never been licensed for curative use in the UK.
They have been used as “compassionate” remedies of last resort in isolated cases.
One such case concerned a 15-year-old woman with cystic fibrosis who was suffering from a deadly bacterial infection and had less than a 1% chance of survival before being effectively treated with a three-phage cocktail by doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
The Committee calls on the Government, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and phage scientists to work together to fund phage studies and authorise the use of their products.
It also urges the MHRA to allow the compassionate use of UK-produced non-GMP phages for medical cases from the last hotel and to review how existing regulations would regulate the liability of doctors and hospitals that use those 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 inappropriate and overuse of antibiotics poses an even greater threat, as millions of people die worldwide from infections caused by antimicrobial-resistant bacteria.
“Phages will be indispensable weapons in the arsenal to combat antimicrobial resistance.
“Gathering evidence from compassionate use cases and clinical trials will be critical to our successful use of phages.
“For this to be imaginable in the UK, transparent regulatory guidance, production facilities for GMP phage production and investment will be essential. “
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