The UK government and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in May joined a partnership dedicated to the development of new antibiotics, vaccines, diagnostics and other products against drug-resistant bacterial infections. The UK's Global AMR (antimicrobial resistance) Innovation Fund is committing up to £20 ($26.6) million and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation up to $25 million over the next three years to CARB-X, a non-profit, public-private partnership set up with the mission of averting the threat of drug-resistant diseases. With the new support, CARB-X has now amassed more than $500 million to invest through 2021 to accelerate innovation by supporting early-stage projects and phase 1 clinical trials. Geneva-based CARB-X was formed in 2016 with support from UK charity Wellcome Trust, the US Department of Health and Human Services Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). It currently has 33 projects ongoing in seven countries, including five drug candidates advanced to phase 1 trials and two diagnostics now in the system-integration and testing phase. Of the 27 current drug projects, 11 focus on new targets and 9 on new antibiotic classes. Four are biologics: one is a vaccine against Staphylococcus aureus and the other three, against Pseudomonas aeruginosa, include recombinant lysin protein, a multispecific antibody and an antibody–drug conjugate. Two are small molecules targeting the microbiome: Clostridium difficile and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae/vancomycin-resistant Enterococci. Of the six device and/or diagnostic projects, three focus on development of hospital-based systems for identifying bloodstream infections. May 2018 also marked the official launch of the Global AMR Research & Development Collaboration Hub, announced at the 71st World Health Assembly in Geneva. The initiative was conceived in 2017 with initial support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust. The secretariat of the Global AMR R&D Hub will initially be based in Berlin, at the German Center for Infection Research. Its 18 members also include Russia, China, the US, France and the European Commission.