WESTERN PRODUCER — The stakes are high in the battle to hold the line on antimicrobial resistance.
It’s a fight that’s happening globally in hospitals, pharmacies, veterinarian offices and farms.
In Canadian laboratories, microbiologist Dominic Poulin-Laprade is one of the people on the front line, working to understand and combat how bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites overcome the drugs that previously controlled them.
“AMR is everywhere, in and on everything and everyone, and it has a major impact on our health — or maybe should I say our death — as well as on our economy,” Poulin-Laprade said.
Canada is at the halfway point of a five-year federal research commitment on antimicrobial resistance.
The Genomics Research and Development Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (GRDI AMR) is scheduled to run from 2023-27. It brings together researchers from multiple federal departments, including Poulin-Laprade.
She outlined that initiative during a virtual symposium hosted by Agriculture Canada’s Sherbrooke Research and Development Centre last month.
Unlike diseases that affect only humans or animals, antimicrobial resistance spreads across what scientists call the “One Health continuum” — the interconnected web of human, animal, plant and environmental health, the researcher said.
Poulon-Laprade described the connections as more complex than “a spider web.”
That complexity is why GRDI AMR involves more than 40 federal scientists and their teams working across sectors, she said. Stakeholders span human health, livestock, aquaculture, agriculture and Canadian environments ranging from urban centes to wilderness areas.
The initiative stems from Canada’s international political commitments and declarations on antimicrobial resistance.
Canada is currently following the Pan-Canadian Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance, which was released in 2023, and looking to address recommendations made by the federal auditor general on the subject.
That pan-Canadian plan outlines five action pillars, including research and innovation, which supports funding for GRDI AMR, among other grants to scientists outside the federal government.
Other pillars include surveillance, stewardship, infection prevention and leadership.
The federal government is also developing a national One Health antimicrobial research strategy and an environmental surveillance strategy to guide future research.
What sets the GRDI AMR initiative apart from other Canadian research funding programs is its integrated approach, Poulin-Laprade said. Unlike traditional funding programs that are divided by sector, GRDI AMR provides funding within a single project for researchers from various sectors.
“GRDI AMR is one of the few funding opportunities that is truly One Health by nature,” she added.
All said, the consortium now includes hundreds of people, working across 25 sub-projects and organized into six work packages. Scientists map the development and mitigation efforts of antimicrobial resistance and use that information to identify areas where action can be taken.
The team’s triumphs so far include developing flexible umbrella agreements that allow data and sample sharing, standardized methods to reduce bias and centralized computing systems to analyze data better.
One example of GRDI AMR work is its research into Klebsiella bacteria, which has developed strains resistant to multiple drugs and can be hyper-virulent, making it bad news for hospital outbreaks and severe community spread.
That pathogen is “an urgent threat to human health,” Poulin-Laprade noted.
More than 50 genetic lineages were identified during a study involving more than 800 Klebsiella strains, which were gathered across sectors such as food, livestock, environment and water sources. There was a troubling overlap in how those genetic types were found across sectors, she said. One particular strain type, ST432, was found in food, cattle and environmental samples in Canada.
It has also been recovered from human clinical settings in South Africa and Malawi, as well as from diseased pigs in England and the West Indies, “so it’s very global,” Poulin-Laprade said.
GRDI AMR research also confirmed fears about the bacteria’s resistance. Most strains were found to carry multiple genes linked to antibiotic resistance. Many carried genes for beta-lactamases — enzymes that break down beta-lactam antibiotics that clinicians and veterinarians rely on daily.
Perhaps most concerning, she said, is that researchers found instances of carbapenemase genes, which produce enzymes that destroy last-line antibiotics, which are the drugs doctors turn to when all else fails.
Significant challenges remain.
Reporting and budget management systems are still siloed by departments, making annual reporting complex. The consortium is also not immune to government spending cuts, inflation that erodes budgets or what Poulin-Laprade described as the backlash of recent American policies that are attacking science.
There are also technical challenges around long-term data storage and protecting genomic information — typical issues in genomics research.
The consortium is also looking at what happens after 2027. It hopes to keep the team together and continue its work, Poulin-Laprade said.
The scope of research continues to expand, with the team analyzing different microbe resistance profiles, genes and factors impacting virulence.
Since antimicrobial resistance is a global issue, Canadian findings will be placed in an international context.
About the author
Reporter
Miranda Leybourne is a Glacier FarmMedia reporter based in Neepawa, Manitoba with eight years of journalism experience, specializing in agricultural reporting. Born in northern Ontario and raised in northern Manitoba, she brings a deep, personal understanding of rural life to her storytelling.
A graduate of Assiniboine College’s media production program, Miranda began her journalism career in 2007 as the agriculture reporter at 730 CKDM in Dauphin. After taking time off to raise her two children, she returned to the newsroom once they were in full-time elementary school. From June 2022 to May 2024, she covered the ag sector for the Brandon Sun before joining Glacier FarmMedia. Miranda has a strong interest in organic and regenerative agriculture and is passionate about reporting on sustainable farming practices. You can reach Miranda at [email protected].
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