AstraZeneca PLC and the Broad Institute announced a collaboration Monday to identify new chemical compounds targeting bacterial and viral infections that could speed the development of new antibacterial and antiviral drugs.

The steady rise of drug-resistant bacteria is an urgent threat to public health, and the two-year collaboration seeks to help address that threat, AstraZeneca and the Broad Institute said.

British drug maker AstraZeneca has a significant presence in Massachusetts, including a research and development campus in Waltham and a manufacturing plant in Westborough. Together, they employed about 900 people as of December.

The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University was founded to help scientists transform medicine with new genome-based knowledge.

In a statement, Dr. Manos Perros, vice president and head of the AstraZeneca infection innovative medicines unit, said, ‘‘We believe new and collaborative approaches between the private and public sectors will help speed the discovery and development of new treatments, particularly for antibiotic-resistant infections.”