July 26, 2019
Bulletin interne de l'Institut Pasteur
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is dramatically increasing worldwide and is becoming one of the most urgent public health threats. There is an urgent need for actions to reverse the curve of AMR expansion and to develop innovative drugs (antibiotics, antiparasites, antifungals, antivirus) and therapeutic strategies for safer and sustainable treatments of infectious diseases. To respond to this urgency, AMR has been declared one of the three priorities of the Institut Pasteur Strategic Plan. The Institut Pasteur is an international center of excellence for biomedical research aiming at unravelling the fundamental mechanisms of life, leading to medical applications.
The Department of Organic Chemistry of the University of Oxford is a world-leading chemistry department carrying out pioneering work, in particular in Chemistry for Biology and Medicine, with a research axis on combating antibiotic resistance. These two high profile and complementary Institutions have decided to join their forces to develop cutting edge projects at the interface of Chemistry and Biology to better tackle the AMR challenge.
The aim of the PPU-Oxford program is to foster projects to fight AMR and the synergy between the Institut Pasteur and the Oxford Chemistry Department through a joint PhD program. PhD students will work on collaborative projects between the two institutions spending up to three months of their PhD in the partner laboratory. The exchange will be particularly attractive for students and will train them to interdisciplinarity.