About LEAD
Who is LEAD?
Leadership in Enhancing Antimicrobial Discovery (LEAD) is an international coalition driving leadership, collaboration, and capacity building in R&D to combat AMR.
The challenge we face
The world is facing a shortage of effective antimicrobial treatments due to the increasing prevalence of drug-resistant infections (Antimicrobial Resistance; AMR) and the slow development of new drugs.
AMR, Policy surrounding R&D and LEAD’s approach
The current market-driven model for antimicrobial drug discovery is failing, with declining investment and talent. Despite the O’Neill Review on Antimicrobial Resistance’s call for incentives and cost-reduction strategies, innovation capacity continues to erode due to unstable careers and limited funding. With limited profitability, pharmaceutical companies continue to exit the field. Many scientists have shifted to other therapeutic areas, which threatens global AMR response and highlights the limits of temporary market fixes.
Antimicrobials are essential to modern medicine—from routine surgeries and chemotherapy to maternal and intensive care. While push-pull mechanisms remain important, LEAD proposes a complementary approach: embedding R&D within health systems and public institutions to build resilience, address workforce gaps, and enable low-cost, needs-driven innovation. This strengthens the ecosystem, making it more sustainable, equitable, and responsive to global health needs.
LEAD’s Objectives
- Advance science for antimicrobial discovery
- Shape policy to support sustainable innovation
- Build leadership and capacity in global partners
- Foster collaboration across disciplines and sectors
Our approach
- Supporting collaboration between health systems and life science R&D strategies
- Encouraging open science and public-led innovation
- Bridging science, policy, and implementation
- Promoting equitable participation beyond traditional partners
International collaboration and diverse partnerships
As LEAD expands globally, its diverse partnerships and alignment with regional initiatives help shape a more coherent ecosystem for antimicrobial innovation.
Through cooperation, capacity building, and leadership development, LEAD enables meaningful engagement across individual, institutional, and international levels - laying the foundation for a resilient and inclusive innovation landscape.
LEAD: Linking R&D & Health Systems for AMR Resilience
Systemic Benefit |
Strategic Contribution of Public-Led R&D |
|---|---|
| Sustainability |
Builds long-term resilience by investing in research infrastructure, scientific workforce, and institutional capacity. This creates a stable foundation for continuous innovation and preparedness against emerging health threats. |
| Equity |
Enable meaningful participation of non-traditional partners in the innovation process through open innovation. Co-developing solutions ensures resulting technologies are more relevant, affordable, and accessible to communities most affected by AMR. |
| Efficiency |
Enhances coordination through shared data systems, open-access platforms, and collaborative research networks. These mechanisms reduce duplication, accelerate discovery, and ensure rapid translation of knowledge into policy and practice. |
| Contribution to Global Health Security |
Strengthens the global response to AMR and contributes to broader goals of health system strengthening and pandemic preparedness by embedding innovation within public institutions and health systems. |
- LEAD fosters next-generation leadership through its bilateral fellowship programme, LEAD Fellows, which emphasises transnational and cross-sectoral perspectives. This approach breaks down silos and promotes shared ownership across government, academia, and industry.
- LEAD also advances low-cost, scalable drug discovery by building public-private partnerships, collaborating with non-profits, and promoting open science.
- Through leadership development, LEAD Fellows become system-level change agents equipped to navigate policy, build coalitions, and drive reform — enabling integrated antimicrobial R&D that responds to public health needs and local realities.
Building on this leadership foundation, LEAD positions its Fellows as vital connectors between discovery science, innovation, and policy. Through structured international exchanges and collaborative learning, Fellows gain insight into the anti-infective discovery ecosystem in both their home and partner countries, while actively contributing to science policy development. Those with a research focus engage in hands-on drug discovery placements with leading UK institutions, accessing advanced infrastructure and mentorship. These exchanges involve multidisciplinary collaboration with teams at the Sir Howard Dalton Centre, Diamond Light Source Synchrotron, and partner laboratories working on structure-guided drug design, AI-driven screening, and early translational research.
LEAD in Action: Our Progress
- Funding from the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and the Sir Howard Dalton Centre enabled LEAD to initiate its first activity between the UK and Japan, including AMR Policy
- Fellowships from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Japan Institute for Health Security (JIHS), named after Dame Sally DAVIES and Mr Yasuhisa SHIOZAKI.
- It has also set up an innovation program between University of Warwick and Kitasato University for the scientists.
- Building on this foundation, LEAD has facilitated a range of UK-Japan collaborative activities and engaged in informal exploratory discussions with global stakeholders, including India and China.
- The UK–Japan collaboration demonstrates LEAD’s pragmatic and cost-effective model for advancing antimicrobial innovation through the new kinds of international partnership based on the principle of shared commitment to contribute to a global public good but with differentiated responsibilities.