AMR.Solutions

Search
Close this search box.

Preclinical pipeline overview / Help fund a movie about AMR!

Dear All: Two things today.

First, Ursula Theuretzbacher, Miloje Savic, Christine Ardal, and Kevin Outterson have published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery a brief but instructive snapshot of the global preclinical antibacterial pipeline. This report nicely complements the recent WHO analysis of the clinical pipeline that concluded that “the world is running out of antibiotics.”

You’ll want to read the paper yourself (it’s brief and open access), so I’ll just summarize by saying that Ursula and colleagues have analyzed applications from Year 1 of the CARB-X initiative, found a good diversity of approaches, and observed that this shows an encouraging alignment with the WHO priority pathogen list. This is encouraging, but these preclinical programs have still a long way to go, will require a lot of support en route, and are of course high risk. Discovery is hard, so let’s keep our fingers crossed!

Second, would you like to help fund a movie about antibiotic resistance? Bill Mudge, Jean Mudge, and Bob Milley are co-producers at Recombinant Films LLC. They have been steadily pulling together a internationally targeted documentary entitled Beating SuperBugs: Can We Win? for a generally educated but uninitiated audience. The documentary will focus on four of the CDC’s top superbug threats: tuberculosis; MRSA; C. difficile; and CRE. 

Using funds from a 2015 Kickstarter campaign, the team are now within about $100k of completing the film for release. If you’d like to help them get to done, you can make a tax-deductible contribution through their 501(c)3, non-profit fiscal sponsor, Catticus Corporation, Berkeley, CA. I think that non-technical material of this type is really valuable and I’m sure they’d appreciate any amount you might send.

All best wishes, –jr

John H. Rex, MD | Chief Medical Officer, F2G Ltd. | Expert-in-Residence, Wellcome Trust. Follow me on Twitter: @JohnRex_NewAbx. See past newsletters and subscribe for the future: http://amr.solutions/blog/

Upcoming meetings of interest to the AMR community:

Dear All,
 
The IDWeek 2024 program committee is again seeking programs on novel antimicrobial agents and novel diagnostics for presentation in pipeline sessions! Here’s what is sought:

  • “Industry partners are invited to submit antimicrobials that are in preclinical stages of development (Phase II and III preferred) or recently approved after January 2024.
  • “The pipeline sessions will include antibacterials, antifungals, and antivirals (excluding COVID-19 and HIV).
  • “The committee also invites companies developing novel diagnostic technologies with a minimum of some preliminary proof of concept data to submit.” 

This is a great opportunity to tell the story of your development project! The deadline to submit is Wednesday, June 26 via the application portal. Any questions should be directed to program@idsociety.org. Please share this email with anyone you think might be interested in applying!
 
In addition, I’ll also note that those with a more general story to tell should look at the BugHub Stage (and the Global BugHub stage). Both BugHub variants seek “presentations that touch on your experience of working in infectious diseases and presentations that ultimately lead to a greater understanding of our diverse field” via a TED Talk-esque speech about your work. The deadline for applications is 26 June, the same as for the pipeline sessions.

I look forward to seeing you there! All best wishes, –jr

John H. Rex, MD | Chief Medical Officer, F2G Ltd. | Operating Partner, Advent Life Sciences. Follow me on Twitter: @JohnRex_NewAbx. See past newsletters and subscribe for the future: https://amr.solutions/blog/. All opinions are my own.

John’s Top Recurring Meetings

Virtual meetings are easy to attend, but regular attendance at annual in-person events is the key to building your network and gaining deeper insight. My personal favorites for such in-person meetings are below. Of particular value for developers are the AMR Conference and the ASM-ESCMID conference. Hope to see you there!

  • 27-30 April 2024 (Barcelona, Spain): 34th ECCMID, the annual meeting of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Go here for details. 
  • 17-20 Sep 2024 (Porto, Portugal): ASM/ESCMID Joint Conference on Drug Development to Meet the Challenge of Antimicrobial Resistance. Go here for the meeting’s general website. You can’t register (yet) for the 2024 event, but save the date!
  • 16-20 Oct 2024 (Los Angeles, USA): IDWeek 2024, the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Save the date! More details to come!
  • 25-26 February 2025 (Basel, Switzerland): The 9th AMR Conference 2025. Go here to register! 

Upcoming meetings of interest to the AMR community:

  • [NEW]  9 Apr 2024 (virtual, 830a-10a ET): GARDP’s next REVIVE webinar entitled “Progressing a discovery project – Criteria and challenges.” Register here.
  • [NEW] 9 Apr 2024 (virtual, 10a-1130a ET): CDC webinar “Impacts of Antimicrobial Resistance on Cancer Care.” Click here for details and to register.
  • 10-11 Apr 2024 (virtual): Sepsis Alliance AMR Conference, a 2-day conference focused on “Practical technologies to manage sepsis and counteract the expanding challenge of antimicrobial resistance.” Go here for details and to register.
  • 26 Apr 2024 (Barcelona, Spain): ESCMID workshop entitled “Using Data Science and Machine Learning for Infection Science: A Hands-on Introduction.” Click here to register or here for more details. 
  • 27-30 April 2024 (Barcelona, Spain): 34th ECCMID, the annual meeting of the European Society for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. See Recurring Meetings list, above.
  • 26-31 May 2024 (Montreal, Canada): EDAR7, the McGill AMR Centre’s 7th edition of their Environmental Dimension of Antimicrobial Resistance conference. Go here for details; final abstract deadline is 21 Dec 2023.
  • 28-29 May 2024 (in person, Uppsala, Sweden): Uppsala Antibiotic Days, a broad-ranging 2-day program hosted by the Uppsala Antibiotic Center. Go here for details and to register.
  • [NEW] 30-31 May 2024 (face-to-face in Rockville, Maryland as well as online, 8.30-5.30p ET on 30 May, 9-2.40p on 31 May): NIAID-sponsored workshop entitled “Towards realizing the promise of adjunctive immune therapy for invasive fungal infections”. The agenda covers host immunity to invasive fungal infections, immune modulators in the context of fungal infections; and strategies for testing immune modulators as adjunctive therapy. Go here for more details and to register.
  • 9-13 June 2024 (in person, Ascona, Switzerland): “New Approaches to Combat Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, 2nd Edition” is a Sunday-Thursday residential workshop focused on the deep biology of AMR. Sponsored by NCCR AntiResist (a Swiss National Science Foundation consortium), the scientific program has the feel of a Gordon Conference. Space is limited, so you are encouraged to apply promptly — go here for details.
  • 13-17 June 2024 (Atlanta, Georgia): ASM Microbe, the annual meeting of the American Society for Microbiology. You can’t register yet, but you can go here for general details.
  • 17-20 Sep 2024 (Porto, Portugal): ASM/ESCMID Joint Conference on Drug Development to Meet the Challenge of Antimicrobial Resistance. See Recurring Meetings list, above.
  • 16-20 Oct 2024 (Los Angeles, USA): IDWeek 2024, the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. See Recurring Meetings list, above. 
  • 19-27 Oct 2024 (Annecy, France, residential in-person program): ICARe (Interdisciplinary Course on Antibiotics and Resistance). Now in its 8th year, Patrice Courvalin directs the program with the support of an all-star scientific committee and faculty. The resulting soup-to-nuts training covers all aspects of antimicrobials, is very intense, and routinely gets rave reviews! Seating is limited, so mark your calendars now if you are interested. Applications open in March 2024 — go here for more details.
  • 4-5 Dec 2024 (in person, Washington, DC): “Fungal Dx 2024: Fungal Diagnostics in Clinical Practice” is a 2-day in-person workshop organized by ISHAM‘s Fungal Diagnostics Working Group. The program and registration links are available at https://fungaldx.com/; the agenda is comprehensive and features an all-star global list of speakers.

Share

More Newsletters

48,015 → 0: Antibacterial discovery is hard. Really, really hard.

Dear All (and with thanks to Patricia Bradford for co-authoring this newsletter), When you are seeking novelty, antibacterial discovery is hard … really, really, REALLY hard. And it gets even harder if you want activity vs. Gram-negative bacteria. As the latest proof of this, a paper from GARDP’s Blasco et al. describing use of an

Call for Pull: Swiss Roundtable on Antibiotics

Dear All, To end the week, we have a really lovely paper from the Swiss Roundtable on Antibiotics (a multidisciplinary, non-profit Swiss association). Here are the links you need: The new (25 March 2024) paper entitled “Effective antibiotics for the Swiss health care system: today and in the future.” A prior (7 Feb 2023) paper

Help PASTEUR cross the finish line: Action Alert from IDSA!

Dear All, Today’s news is that the House PASTEUR sponsors (Drew Ferguson [R-GA-3], Scott Peters [D-CA-50], Jake LaTurner [RKS-2] and Mike Levin [D-CA-49]) are urging House leadership to authorize the PASTEUR Act without initially having funding attached. Although this may seem counterintuitive, initial passage as a $0 bill is a solid strategy — it is common

More Newsletters
Subscribe

AMR.Solutions

Using ideas to connect, create, and inspire

Twitter Facebook Linkedin Envelope Instagram Youtube

Supported by the Wellcome Trust

Search

Privacy Policy

Site Map

Scroll to Top