Sign a letter to help #PassPASTEUR!

Dear All, 

MyCARE, a fungal patient advocacy organization, and the Partnership to Fight Infectious Diseases (PFID), are sending a letter to the California Congressional Delegation asking them to weigh in U.S. House and Senate leadership to pass the PASTEUR Act by the end of the year. The state of California has the largest Congressional delegation and it has acted in the past as a group to help urge PASTEUR passage.

The hope is that a strong showing can help ensure the PASTEUR Act remains in end-of-year negotiations and ultimately we can all celebrate it becoming law. PFID has organized letters before that I have shared with you all so, if you signed then, please add your name to this latest sending! 

For transparency, I’d like to remind you of the disclaimer about my primary day job in the pharmaceutical industry working for a company developing an antifungal agent (https://amr.solutions/about/). To avoid conflicts of interest, I generally don’t write about fungus-related topics. That said, my personal interest as an infectious diseases physician is broader than any one drug or class of drug — we need them all!

In case you want some reasons for signing the letter, here are some facts to consider:

1. The combination of a fungal advocacy group with PFID is a great partnership: Remember that the PASTEUR Act is about both antibacterial agents and antifungal agents!
   1. Like I said in my disclaimer, I avoid discussing fungals in this newsletter but humanity needs all the forms of antibiotics it can get!
2. Fungal infections are definitely on the rise!
   1. As discussed in the articles cited just below, 
      1. We are seeing emergence of new fungal pathogens (Candida auris)
      2. We are seeing emergence of resistant fungal pathogens (azole-resistant Aspergillus fumigatus; terbinafine-resistant fungal skin infections)
      3. And we are seeing geographic spread of fungal pathogens (Coccidioides, aka Valley Fever)
   2. 18 Oct 2024, The Conversation: “Antifungal resistance is not getting nearly as much attention as antibiotic resistance – yet the risks to global health are just as serious”
   3. 25 Aug 2023, Wired: “The battle against the fungal apocalypse is just beginning”
   4. 27 Sep 2024, JAMA: “Why the Rise of This Drug-Resistant Fungus Is Raising International Concern”
   5. 28 Nov 2023, J Clin Microbiol: “Trichophyton indotineae and other terbinafine-resistant dermatophytes in North America”
   6. 1 June 2021, Scientific American: “Deadly Fungi Are the Newest Emerging Microbe Threat All Over the World”
3. And of course, bacterial infections are accelerating in parallel. I’ve been especially struck of late by rising concerns that global conflicts and perhaps even bioweapon research may fuel the rise of resistance:
   1. 8 Dec 2023, CDC: “Responding to the Wartime Spread of Antimicrobial-Resistant Organisms — Ukraine, 2022”.
   2. 8 Dec 2023, CNN: “Wartime spread of drug-resistant infections in Ukraine is an ‘urgent crisis,’”
   3. 23 July 2024, AMR.Solutions: The science behind the way that the debris of war has a special potential to accelerate drug-resistant infections!
   4. 12 Sep 2024, Politico: “Wars are breeding superbugs that will spread ‘everywhere’”. (There is a focus on Gaza in this one.)
   5. 3 Aug 2024, Forbes: “Antimicrobial Resistance On The Rise Due To Wars In Ukraine And Gaza”
   6. 6 Sep 2024, Task & Purpose: “Pentagon to fund study of antibiotic-resistant wounds in Ukraine to plan for future wars” — the Pentagon is taking this seriously!
   7. 25 Oct 2024, Washington Post: “Satellite images show major expansion at Russian site with secret bioweapons past”
4. We in the AMR community can use the challenges for both fungi and bacteria to help PASTEUR pass! Our pipelines of both antibacterial and antifungal drugs are woefully inadequate (see the AMR.Solutions pipeline webpage for details). Superbugs do not know borders on a map and the potential misuse of them in warfare should be avoided at all costs.

Click here to read and sign the letter. Please also share it with every organization or patient you know that might be willing to lend their support. The deadline for signatures is 5pm ET / 2pm PT on Wednesday November 27th 2024! The plan is to send the letter to Congress the week of December 2nd 2024.

Please sign your name, get in touch with your government representatives, and keep promoting the protection of antibiotics!

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.