Dear All:
Yes, I know that yesterday’s Scary/Scarier/Scariest newsletter about Achaogen was a downer. That note was as hard to write as I’m sure it was to read! I’ve received multiple comments and questions regarding the path forward and you can expect a follow-up note on this in the near future.
For today, an initial way to act for change would be for those of you who are developing a diagnostic, therapeutic, or preventive agent for AMR to have your company be part of the cross-industry alliances below.
Globally, all companies should be part of the AMR Industry Alliance. With over 100 biotech, diagnostics, generics and research-based pharmaceutical companies and associations joining forces, this is the group behind the 2016 “Davos Declaration” industry roadmap for combating AMR. To learn more, go here. For further information as well as to become a member, please contact Magdalena Babinska at M.Babinska@AMRIndustryAlliance.org.
And if you are based in Europe, you should consider being part of the BEAM Alliance, a network of European SMEs fighting antimicrobial resistance (AMR). This is the group behind the recent (excellent!) conference in Berlin (link). BEAM have also published white papers on ways to support European R&D (link), as well as ways to better categorize antimicrobial innovation needs (link). BEAM’s secretariat can be contacted at contact@beam-alliance.eu.
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:
- 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
- 20-24 June 2019 (San Francisco): Annual ASM Microbe meeting.
- 10-11 Jul 2019 (Madison, WI): Tiny Earth Symposium, a teaching consortium that uses crowd-sourcing of antibiotic-producing microbes to improve undergraduate education. Details here.
- 12 July 2019 (FDA, White Oak Campus): Public workshop to discuss the 2018 LPAD guidance. Register here.
- [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 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.
- 12-13 Mar 2020 (Berlin?): BEAM-, Novo REPAIR-, CARB-X-, DZIF-, ND4BB-, ENABLE-supported (among a long list!) Conference on Novel Antimicrobials and AMR Diagnostics. Final location is TBD, details will appear here, and you should mark your calendar now.
- 18-21 Apr 2020 (Paris): Annual ECCMID meeting (#30)
- 10-13 Apr 2021 (Vienna): Annual ECCMID meeting (#31)
