John Rex

OHE £40k Policy Innovation Prize: AMR, anyone?

Dear All, One of your alert co-readers (Abigail Herron) pointed out to me the currently open call for applications for the OHE (Office of Health Economics) Innovation Policy Prize, a biennial £40k prize seeking “to promote thought leadership and solution-based theories around the big questions affecting the future of our industry.” Intriguingly for the AMR community, their

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WHO call for data on pre-clinical antifungal R&D projects

Dear All, As part of their long-running project to maintain a useful view of the global antibacterial and antifungal pipelines, WHO yesterday announced a call for data on pre-clinical antifungal R&D projects. The scope is anything from Lead Optimization to pre-IND. Here are the links you need: The WHO webpage describing the call for data

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48,015 → 0: Antibacterial discovery is hard. Really, really hard.

Dear All (and with thanks to Patricia Bradford for co-authoring this newsletter), When you are seeking novelty, antibacterial discovery is hard … really, really, REALLY hard. And it gets even harder if you want activity vs. Gram-negative bacteria. As the latest proof of this, a paper from GARDP’s Blasco et al. describing use of an

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Call for Pull: Swiss Roundtable on Antibiotics

Dear All, To end the week, we have a really lovely paper from the Swiss Roundtable on Antibiotics (a multidisciplinary, non-profit Swiss association). Here are the links you need: The new (25 March 2024) paper entitled “Effective antibiotics for the Swiss health care system: today and in the future.” A prior (7 Feb 2023) paper

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Help PASTEUR cross the finish line: Action Alert from IDSA!

Dear All, Today’s news is that the House PASTEUR sponsors (Drew Ferguson [R-GA-3], Scott Peters [D-CA-50], Jake LaTurner [RKS-2] and Mike Levin [D-CA-49]) are urging House leadership to authorize the PASTEUR Act without initially having funding attached. Although this may seem counterintuitive, initial passage as a $0 bill is a solid strategy — it is common

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Tragedy of the (Antibiotic) Commons: A true market failure

Dear All, In a 28 Feb 2024 newsletter entitled “How Economists (And Finance Ministers) Think…”, we reviewed an important new paper on the economics of antibiotics from Anthony McDonnell and his colleagues at CGD (Center for Global Development). The paper’s core theme was that the antibiotic market represents a set of market failures which collectively converge

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Ready, set, go! AMR appropriations in the US FY2025 budget

Dear All, If you follow US politics, you will know that the USG (US Government) is beginning its appropriations process for FY2025 (Federal Year 2025). In preparation, a letter calling for AMR-related funding has been drafted by the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), AdvaMedDx, American Society for Microbiology (ASM), Association for Professionals in Infection Control

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2024 CARB-X funding rounds: Treatment, Prevention, and Diagnostics

Dear All, Heads up! Having just yesterday announced funding of its 100th project, CARB-X have today announced two funding rounds for 2024. With application dates of 18-29 Mar 2024 and 23 Sep-4 Oct 2024, applications are sought on 4 major areas (see extended details below my signature): Therapeutics for Infections Caused by Gram-Negative Pathogens (WHO and

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