Antibiotic Resistant Pathogens Framework Data Initiative
Infectious diseases are the second most important cause of death globally after heart disease, and kill more people than cancer.
Severe sepsis and septic shock have a mortality rate of 20-40% in the setting of optimal resuscitation in wealthy countries and are responsible for the loss of millions of health dollars and tens of thousands of lives every year in Australia. Antibiotic intervention remains one of the most powerful and cost-effective interventions in medicine, but is under severe threat from antibiotic resistance.
Analysis of the spread of resistant pathogens suggests that co-evolution of increased virulence may be an important additional factor in the dissemination of resistant strains, but this relationship is not well understood. Better understanding of invasiveness (as exemplified by established bloodstream infection) is crucial to the development of new approaches to clinical management, including strategies such as virulence-attenuating approaches that do not necessarily select for more antimicrobial resistance. This strategy requires the co-ordinated action of multi-disciplinary teams to identify common pathogenic pathways that may be exploited for the early diagnosis, treatment and prevention of life-threatening bacterial infections.
This Bioplatforms Australia Framework Data Initiative is led by Prof Mark Walker from the University of Queensland and brought together researchers from several leading Australian research-intensive universities including the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne, Monash University, University of New South Wales, University of Technology Sydney, and the University of Adelaide.
Further support for this initiative is provided by Research Data Service (RDS) now part of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC). RDS is an NCRIS supported capability to provide national research data infrastructure, and is launching its Food and Health Flagship, benefiting Health and Life Science researchers around the country. The Flagship develops data services in support of this initiative to provide Health and Life Science researchers with an open ‘multi-omics’ data platform. This platform supportsdata.bioplatforms.com the storage, integration, analysis, annotation, visualisation, sharing and publication of data generated from multi-omic research.