HPRU team visit University of Surrey Vet School

HPRU team with their Surrey colleagues

The University of Surrey School of Veterinary Medicine recently hosted the HPRU team to discuss areas of interest for future joint collaborations

In July, Professor Alison Holmes, Dr Enrique Castro-Sanchez, Dr Ceire Costelloe, Dr Tim Rawson from the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit and Dr Lindsay Evans and Dr Pau Herrero Vinas from EMBRACE met Dr Mark Chambers and colleagues at the University of Surrey School of Veterinary Medicine to examine opportunities for future collaborations.

The day started with presentations given by the HPRU team about the research they are involved in followed by presentations from their Surrey colleagues.

HPRU colleagues discussed synergies with their Surrey peers that could be further explored in potential joint collaborations, including the following :

• Spatial network mapping opportunities since Surrey Vet School has a large repository of isolate with full clinical history
• Antibiotic release into the environment
• activation/destruction of antibiotics and strategies to reduce antibiotic half-life in the environment
• Lifetime sensors monitoring cattle exposure to antibiotics could provide opportunities for epidemiology monitoring.
• Potential for longitudinal study based at Surrey vet school looking at changes in prescribing habits after stewardship intervention
• Surrey is working on developing a new career pathway for Vet students that includes microbiology – could be used as a model for medical students?
• POC diagnostic device for infection detection used in cattle. Is there potential to use it in humans?

The two teams agreed at the meeting to forge new links between the multi-disciplinary research group EMBRACE and SurreyCHAIR by co-ordinating joint activities, including sharing seminar invitations; inviting speakers from Surrey to speak at Imperial and vis –versa; joint seminar/half day event; mini-sandpit on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) and a joint Surrey/Imperial EPSRC bid.

Further collaboration was discussed with a planned joint data visualisation workshop as well as a series of seminars/workshops on drug detection technology and devices; longitudinal study on education and AMR stewardship and economics and prescribing.

The half day meeting was a positive first step in examining opportunities for collaboration in the near future and developing research together between the two institutions.