Dear All,
Once again, we’re going to have a brief change from our usual programming with this newsletter.
I hope you recognize the name Alan Carr … he is an analyst at Needham & Company (https://www.needhamco.com/) who writes regularly on the antibacterial pipeline. Go here for the most recent (14 Aug 20) newsletter on his summaries: his analyses have been invaluable on many occasions to the antibacterial community.
Alan would again (you may recall that we did this once before) like to do a point survey on COVID-19, this time focused on the R&D community view on vaccines.
2 Oct 2020 update: Alan has now reported on the survey (link to his newsletter):
- Most of the respondent pool (n = 122) is composed of members of industry (55%), academia (19%), and government/NGOs (18%).
- Approximately 65% believe the FDA should set at least a 60% vaccine effectiveness threshold for approval.
- The average preferred review period for the FDA to issue an Emergency Use Authorization after submission of full Phase 3 data is 70 days (median 60).
- About half of the respondents plan to seek a COVID-19 vaccine immediately or within a few weeks of an Emergency Use Authorization if the first vaccine is 60% effective and 80% if it is 90% effective.
- Of the four Operation Warp Speed vaccine technologies, there is an expectation that attenuated replicating live viral vector vaccines will be most effective and that mRNA vaccines will be least effective.
- With respect to safety, there is an expectation that adjuvanted recombinant subunit vaccines will be most safe and attenuated replicating live vector vaccines least safe.
Thanks for participating! Stay safe! 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.
Current funding opportunities (most current list is here):
- Novo REPAIR Impact Fund closed its most recent round on 31 Jul 2020. Go here for current details.
- 2020 funding rounds for CARB-X have not been announced.
- The Global AMR R&D Hub’s dynamic dashboard (link) summarizes funders and projects by geography, stage, and more.
- It’s not a funder, but AiCuris’ AiCubator offers incubator support to very early stage projects. Read more about it here.
- You might also be interested in the most current lists of R&D incentives (link) and priority pathogens (link)
Upcoming meetings of interest to the AMR community (most current list is here):
- 30 Sep 2020 (online, 2pm BST): Longitude Prize Sprint Workshop 2 entitled “Building Medtech Companies: Learn how to attract investment to fund product development and scale your company.” Details and registration are here.
- [Registration is now open] 2 Oct 2020 (online meeting): 7th annual Boston Area Antimicrobial Research Network (BAARN) meeting. Go here for details on this (free!) online meeting.
- 21-25 Oct 2020 (online meeting), IDWeek 2020. Go here for details.
- 26-29 Oct 2020 (online meeting), Annual ESPID meeting (European Society for Pediatric ID, #38)
- 27 Oct 2020 (online, 9a-5p EST): FDA Workshop entitled “Development Considerations of Antimicrobial Drugs for the Treatment of Gonorrhea.” Go here to register.
- 27 Oct 2020 (online meeting), BARDA Industry Day, a discussion of U.S. Government medical countermeasure priorities. Mark your calendar now and watch this website for details.
- 18-24 Nov 2020 (everywhere): World Antimicrobial Awareness Week. For resources, go here for WHO’s home page for the week. The focus will be on two messages: “Antimicrobials: handle with care” and “United to preserve antimicrobials.”
- 9-12 Jul 2021 (Vienna): Annual ECCMID meeting (#31)
- 18-21 May 2021 (Albuquerque, New Mexico): Biannual meeting of the MSGERC (Mycoses Study Group Education and Research Consortium). Save-the-date announcement is here, details to follow.
- 20-24 June 2021 (Toronto): International Symposium on Pneumococci and Pneumococcal Diseases (ISPPD-12). Go here for details.
- 3-7 Jun 2021 (Anaheim), ASM Microbe 2021. Go here for details.
- 27 Jun-2 Jul 2021 (Ventura, CA): Gordon Research Conference entitled “Antimicrobial Peptides”. Go here for details, go here for the linked 26-27 Jun Gordon Research Seminar that precedes it.
- 5-21 Aug 2021 (Marine Biology Laboratory, Woods Hole, MA): Residential course entitled “Molecular Mycology: Current Approaches to Fungal Pathogenesis.” This 2-week intensive training program has run annually for many years and gets outstanding reviews. Go here for details.
- 8-11 Oct 2021 (Aberdeen, Scotland): 10th Trends in Medical Mycology. Go here for details.
- 16-24 Oct 2021 (Annecy, France): Interdisciplinary Course on Antibiotics and Resistance (ICARe). This is a soup-to-nuts residential course on antibiotics, antibiotic resistance, and antibiotic R&D. The course is very intense, very detailed, and gets rave reviews. Registration is here and is limited to 40 students.
- 6-11 Mar 2022 (Il Ciocco, Tuscany): Gordon Research Conference entitled “New Antibacterial Discovery and Development”. Go here for details, go here for the linked 5-6 Mar Gordon Research Seminar that precedes it.
