Note: See also these related newsletters: 13 Jan 2019 on DTR as part of the language of resistance, 7 Jun 2020 on using DTR to estimate antibiotic value, and 25 Apr 2025 on evolving the idea of DTR to include antibiotic access. There is also a 5-minute DTR explainer on YouTube that you might find useful.
This newsletter is part of a series — here are the links to Part 1, Part 2, (this one is Part 3), Part 4, and Part 5. Dear All, As a coda to the two newsletters on Chemicals, Drugs, and Halicin (link and link), XKCD gets the final word: Image reproduced with permission from https://xkcd.com/1217/. And, you might
Dear All, In a paper that is clearly a labor of love (1,032 references!), Mark Butler and Robert Capon have summarized the history of 217 natural product-inspired antibiotics across 16 classes from penicillin to fidaxomicin! Here are the links you need: Butler MS, Capon RJ. Natural product inspired antibiotics approved for human use – 1943
Dear All, Long note alert: Set aside at least 30 minutes for this one … there’s a lot of important material here. Last week’s workshop entitled “Enhancing the Clinical Trial Enterprise for Antibacterial Drug Development in the United States” was an unusual and unusually instructive meeting. You can go here for the meeting materials but as there are
Dear All, Please mark your calendar now to be in the Washington, DC area on 18-19 Nov 2019 for a 2-day workshop at FDA’s White Oak Campus focused on enhancing the clinical trial enterprise for antibacterial drug development. Jointly co-sponsored by FDA, IDSA, NIAID, and Pew Trusts, this meeting will have a particular focus on (a)
Dear All, Last fall, the team at ATMF (Access to Medicine Foundation) released the 3rd update to the AMR Benchmark series and Damiano de Felice was a guest author for a newsletter about the findings. That report offered a wealth of granular data, in-depth analyses and revealing graphs about what pharmaceutical companies in the global antibiotic and
This is the first of a 5-part newsletter series. There is a second (28 Sep 2023) newsletter that expands on the EPA concept note, a third (12 Jan 2024) newsletter about ending the use of streptomycin spray on citrus crops, a 4th newsletter (27 Jan 2024) containing some additional resources, and a fifth newsletter (11
Dear All, Our colleagues in Europe have been busy! Along with yesterday’s announcement about transferrable exclusivity vouchers, we also had publication of the Horizon Europe Work Programme 2026-2027. It’s a really big program that includes within its Cluster 1 a trio of calls of interest to readers of this newsletter: HORIZON-HLTH-2027-01-DISEASE-08 call seeks projects developing
Dear All (wonkish … but worth it … get ready to follow the links!), Greetings in the new year! As a marvelous way to end the last year, the US FDA announced on 12 Dec 2025 its approval of two new oral therapies for gonorrhea, thus addressing the priority pathogen lists of both WHO (High
Dear All, Regular readers will be aware of the global conversation now happening around the threat arising from the potential to create viable organisms that are (at a molecular level) the mirror images of existing organisms. If this is new to you (or, if you’d like a refresh), here are the links you need: 18