Funding Opportunity: India-UK Partnership to address Farmed Animal Diseases and Health

Deadline: 11-Jul-23

Apply for funding to advance the mechanistic understanding of host-pathogen interactions in farmed animals or to tackle veterinary antimicrobial resistance (Vet-AMR) or both.

BBSRC and DBT seek to bring research groups in the UK and India together to build on their combined strengths and work on projects, engaging with users, in particular farmers, with the aim of improving farmed animal health and welfare. Projects should build new links or strengthen existing links between India and the UK, and demonstrate how research in the two countries would be integrated.

Programme Aim

• The aim of this programme is to advance the mechanistic understanding of:
  • susceptibility of farmed animals to infectious diseases
  • resistance to disease treatment
• with a focus on understanding host factors and farming practices that promote and prevent these.

Programme Scope

• Research area one: enhancing mechanistic understanding of host-pathogen interactions
  • Host-pathogen interaction is a dynamic process between diverse pathogens and host in all stages of pathogenic infection. It is vital to develop deeper understanding of such interactions not only to understand infectious disease, but also to develop effective detection and intervention strategies.
  • The aim is to use traditional and high throughput approaches to understand host-pathogen interactions from the basic molecular and cellular levels, all the way through to epidemiological use of big data sets and understanding the social drivers behind behavioural change around farming of animals.
  • Host-pathogen research areas can include, for example:
    • develop tractable systems, such as models, cell lines and organoids to further research
    • focus on pathogen and vector biology including pathogen ecology, evolution, transmission, and epidemiology
    • elucidate host factors or mechanisms including genetic, adaptation, immune evasion, and disease persistence, impact of different production systems and direct or indirect interactions between pathogens, including co-infections
    • the mechanisms that underpin susceptibility including spill over events, for instance zoonoses, reverse zoonoses and epizootics
• Research area two: tackling Vet-AMR (includes bacterial, parasitic and viral pathogens) for the purpose of improving animal health
  • The emergence of Vet-AMR is causing devastating impacts on animal health by hampering the effectiveness of treatments. The focus is to develop mechanistic understanding of how resistance develops and use that information to develop intervention strategies to reduce reliance on antimicrobials and develop the next generation of alternatives to antimicrobials.
  • The aim is to understand:
    • fundamental cellular and molecular mechanisms of antimicrobial or anthelmintic resistance
    • drivers and risk factors of Vet-AMR spread in India and the UK, including the generation and sharing of AMR usage datasets
    • AMR potential in different ecologies, including the genetics of host and transmission dynamics between wildlife, livestock, humans and environment
  • Key research areas for Vet-AMR can include, for example:
    • affordable, pen-side diagnostics to detect AMR on farms
    • effective therapeutics, including alternatives
    • unified protocols and data on antimicrobial usage and resistance across different levels (animal, farm, local, national) to better monitor AMR in India and UK settings
  • Projects that focus on the development of models, data or integration of social sciences aspects with relevance to both host-pathogen interactions and Vet-AMR are particularly welcome.
  • They expect to fund a range of proposals which span the two research areas. Proposals may focus on either one of the two research areas or work across both of them.
  • They encourage larger multidisciplinary consortia proposals.
  • A key goal of the programme is to develop new insights, approaches and technologies that support the needs of users, such as industry, local communities, and national, state, and local-level policymakers and regulators.

Funding Information

• BBSRC will fund up to £1 million at 80% of the full economic cost to support the UK component and DBT will fund the India component. Total funding available is £5 million from BBSRC for the UK applicants with matched equivalent resources from DBT for successful Indian applicants.
• Duration
  • Projects must commence no later than 1 April 2024.
  • Projects will have a duration of up to three years.

Eligibility Criteria

• Each project must list one principal investigator in the UK and one principal investigator in India along with one co-principal investigator in India. There is no limit to the number of participants listed as collaborators or co-investigators. Industry will not be funded under this funding opportunity.
• UK participants
  • This funding opportunity invites applicants from UK-based organisations that meet BBSRC’s standard eligibility conditions, including:
    • higher education institutions
    • eligible independent research organisations
    • approved public sector research establishments
    • UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)-funded labs and facilities
• India participants
  • All Indian faculty (from public or private universities or institution, non-governmental organisations, voluntary organisation trusts or research foundations) are normally eligible to apply for DBT funding opportunities as principal investigators with at least one eligible faculty from UK as co-principal investigator.
  • Applications involving ineligible applicants, from either India or the UK, will result in the whole application being withdrawn.

For more information, visit BBSRC.