Pipelines & scorecards: Perspectives from Pew, JPIAMR, and Access to Medicine Foundation

Dear All: Today we have a new pipeline summary from the Pew Trusts and news about important global scorecards from JPIAMR (Joint Programming Initiative on AMR) and the Access to Medicine Foundation (ATMF). These ideas may seem very distant, especially if you spend your days working at a lab bench, but in truth these are the sort of reports that underpin the long-range planning decisions that make your work possible! You’ll find full details on each just below my signature, with highlights here:

• New pipeline summary: Updated from Sep 2018, the Pew Trusts find 42 small molecule and 30 non-traditional candidates in clinical trials. Although there are a number of novel mechanism products, only one of these novel mechanism candidate small molecules has potential activity against Gram-negative ESKAPE pathogens. Five of the non-traditional candidate products have potential Gram-negative ESKAPE activity, but as Pew notes such products are “unlikely to fully substitute or replace antibiotic use” although they “could provide new treatment options for patients through combined use with antibiotics.” Bottom line: More Gram-negative therapeutics, please!
• JPIAMR summary: The new JPIAMR Research Funding Datahub summarizes work being funded by EU member states (via JPIAMR, the Joint Programming Initiative on AMR), the EC itself, and Wellcome Trust. Take a little time to explore this: it provides a valuable resource for the scientific community, funders, and policy makers to gain insight into the scale and scope of publicly funded AMR research. Bottom line: 1.8b EUR were at work on 1 Jan 17! Wow!
• Access to Medicine Foundation (ATMF) AMR Benchmark: ATMF analyzed the AMR landscape in 2018 and is planning to update this for 2020. In 2018, ATMF found examples of good progress and concluded that companies should actively look at how they can expand these practices. ATMF found that companies that had signed up for the Davos Declaration and the 2016 Industry Roadmap were making progress in key AMR-related areas.  Bottom line: Every AMR-focused company should review and seek to advance these principles!

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: https://amr.solutions/blog/

Pew Pipeline Summary of Traditional/Small Molecule Antibiotics:

• Interactive chart: Antibiotics Currently in Global Clinical Development
• Analysis: Tracking the Global Pipeline of Antibiotics in Development
• Infographic: The Critical Need for New Antibiotics

Pew Pipeline Summary of Non-traditional Candidates:

• Interactive chart: Nontraditional Products for Bacterial Infections in Clinical Development
• Analysis: Assessment of Nontraditional Products in Development to Combat Bacterial Infections

JPIAMR summary: An extensive overview of public investments by JPIAMR, the EC and Wellcome Trust into antimicrobial resistance (AMR) research is available on the newly published JPIAMR Research Funding Dashboard. The dashboard summarizes work that was active or committed on 1 Jan 2017 and enables interactive analyses for exploring data on national competitive grants by agency, country, JPIAMR research priority and individual research projects. The mapping recorded a total investment of 1794 M€ in AMR research from a total of 1 939 projects. Of the projects reported, 76.2% of the total investment was recorded for research projects in antibiotic resistance followed by 20.6% in anti-parasitic and 3.2% in anti-fungal resistance research. Read more in the report on Mapping of AMR research funding (2017).

Access to Medicine Foundation’s planned AMR Benchmark update: ATMF has released a description of the analytical framework for its 2020 Antimicrobial Resistance Benchmark. An update from ATMF’s 2018 review, the 2020 update will focus on R&D priority pathogens, responsible manufacturing, appropriate access, and stewardship. The Benchmark will critically assess companies’ approaches to both access and stewardship planning, focusing on companies with promising compounds in their clinical pipeline for targeting the highest priority resistant bacteria and fungi as defined by the US CDC and WHO. The 2016 Industry Roadmap is noted in the 2018 report as a good first step for industry as a whole. 

Upcoming meetings of interest to the AMR community:

• 14-15 Mar 2019 (Berlin): BEAM-, Novo REPAIR-, CARB-X-, DZIF-, ND4BB-ENABLE-sponsored (among a long list!) Berlin Conference on Novel Antimicrobials and AMR Diagnostics. Details here. Poster submissions are being accepted through 9 Jan (details here).
• 18 Mar 2019 (everywhere): Deadline for responding to the WHO call for data on preclinical antibiotic programs. Details here.
• 21 March 2019 (Boston): Longitude Prize and CARB-X AMR Diagnostic Workshop. Local diagnostic developers invited to pitch! Details here.
• 1 Apr 2019 (University of California, Los Angeles): Longitude Prize AMR Diagnostic Workshop and evening Lecture on the Longitude Prize. Details here.
• [NEW] 8 Apr 2019 (FDA White Oak Campus): Workshop entitled “Development of Antibacterial Drugs for the Treatment of Nontuberculous Mycobacterial Disease”. Register here.
• 21-22 Mar 2019 (Birmingham, UK): BSAC Spring Conference.
• 26 Mar 2019 (London, UK): Sponsored by The Economist, a 1-day symposium entitled “Antimicrobial Resistance: Preventing an antibiotic apocalypse.” Register here.
• 28 Mar 2019 (everywhere, 4-5.30p GMT): GARDP-sponsored webinar entitled “Clinical development for non-developers Part 3: Antibacterial Drug Enhancer Combinations and Non-traditional Products.” Register here.
• 11-12 Apr 2019 (Amsterdam): ESGAP–SWAB (European Study Group for Antibiotic Policies – Stichting Werkgroep Antibioticabeleid) Technical Workshop on measuring quantity and quality of antimicrobial use. Register here. 
• 13-16 Apr 2019 (Amsterdam): Annual ECCMID meeting
• 16-18 Apr 2019 (Utrecht): ICOHAR, International Conference on One Health Antimicrobial Resistance. Organized by the ESCMID Study Group for Veterinary Microbiology (ESGVM).
• 24-26 Apr 2019 (Boston): Annual SHEA (Soc. for Hospital Epidemiology of America) Spring meeting
• 6-11 May 2019 (Ljubljana, Slovenia): 37th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID). Details here.
• 20 May 2019 (everywhere): Application deadline for NIAID solicitation (HHS-NIH-NIAID-BAA2019-1) for proposals to support new vaccine or therapeutics candidates targeting antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections. Go here for more details.
• 3-6 Jun 2019 (Philadelphia): Annual BIO meeting
• 10-11 June 2019 (Research Triangle Park, NC): AMR Action Summit on R&D and Commercialization. Sponsors include the British-American Business Council, the UK Gov’t, CARB-X, the NC Biotechnology Center, and others. Details here.
• 20-24 June 2019 (San Francisco): Annual ASM Microbe meeting.
• [Mark your calendar now!] 3-6 Sep 2019 (Boston). Annual ASM-ESCMID Conference on Antibiotic Development. The Bootcamp series will continue on 3 Sep with the main meeting on 4-6 Sep. Mark your calendar now and check back here for details.
• 6-8 Sep 2019 (Bilbao, Spain): 5th ESCMID conference on Vaccines. Check back here for details.
• 2-6 Oct 2019 (Washington, DC): IDSA’s annual IDWeek meeting.
• 19-27 Oct 2019 (Annecy, France): International Course on Antibiotics and Resistance (ICARe) – A soup-to-nuts intensive residential training program on all things AMR, especially R&D for new antibiotics. See this link for details.
• [Mark your calendar now!] 1-6 Mar 2020 (Il Ciocco, Tuscany, Italy): GRC on Antibacterial Discovery and Development: “Now is the time to re-boot antibiotic R&D before it’s too little, too late.” Not yet online, but the date is firm. Will share a link when it becomes available.