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: https://13.43.35.2/blog/
Upcoming meetings of interest to the AMR community:
- 10 Oct 2017 (Hanoi): UK-Vietnam Newton Fund Pre-Call Workshop on Partnership for Infectious Disease Research 2017
- 12-13 Oct 2017 (Berlin): AMR Call to Action Conference – contact amrcalltoaction@wellcome.ac.uk for more info
- 15 Oct 2017: Global Handwashing Day!
- 19 Oct 2017 (London): BSAC: AMR Market Lounges. Networking day.
- 29 Oct-1 Nov 2017 (Santa Fe): Keystone Symposium – Antimicrobials and Resistance: Opportunities and Challenges
- [NEW] 3 Nov 2017 (no specific location): One Health Day
- 6 Nov 2017 (Boston): BAARN (Boston-Area Antimicrobial Resistance Network), Annual Meeting for 2017
- 7-8 Nov 2017 (Washington, DC): BARDA Industry Days
- 11-19 Nov 2017 (Annecy, France): International Course on Antibiotics and Resistance (ICARE)
- 13-19 Nov 2017 WHO’s World Antibiotic Awareness Week
- 15 Nov 2017 (London): BSAC: AMR Market Lounges. Networking day.
- 20 Nov 2017 (week of, China): UK-China Newton Fund Workshop: Antimicrobial Resistance Centre Partnerships Initiative.
- 20 Nov 2017 (London): Early Career Researcher Workshop on Diagnostics for Antimicrobial Resistance.
- 24-27 Nov 2017 (Taipei): 30th International Congress of Chemotherapy & Infection (ICC)
- 12-14 Feb 2018 (Baltimore): ASM Biothreats Conference
- 11-16 Mar 2018 (Ventura Beach): Gordon Research Conference on Antibacterial Discovery
- 21-24 Apr 2018 (Madrid): ECCMID
- 7-11 Jun 2018 (Atlanta): ASM Microbe
- 22-27 Jul 2018 (Bryant University, Smithfield, RI): Gordon Research Conference on Drug Resistance for Cancer, Infectious Disease and Agriculture