Horizon 2020: €1m Prize for antibiotic resistance

Written by Longitude Prize Team

Antibiotic Resistance is a pressing global issue, and we are proud to be championing this as part of Longitude Prize. World leaders and health organisations from across the globe recognise how important the problem of antibiotic resistance is and are constantly making efforts to raise awareness and seek solutions to these issues. Last week the European Commission launched a €1 million prize aimed at helping to reduce antibiotic resistance. The prize will be awarded to a person or team that manages to produce a test for upper respiratory tract infections to tell whether the patient needs antibiotics or not.

The prize rules are available online now, and the prize is open for entries from 10th March 2015 until 17th August 2016.

European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation Carlos Moedas said:

“Growing resistance to antibiotics is one of the biggest challenges to public health today. We need to find new ways to prevent people from dying from infections that have been treatable for decades, until resistance rendered our drugs ineffective. We need to bring new classes of antibiotics to market and we need to take preventative measures to stop antibiotics being over-prescribed and over-used. Under Horizon 2020 we are continuing to help save lives and reduce the €1.5 billion in healthcare expenses and productivity losses the EU incurs each year from drug-resistant infections.”