R&D Insight

HERA: 13m EUR call for rapid point-of-care susceptibility devices

Dear All, You can’t actually submit your application until ~4 April 2025, but I’ve learned that EU’s HERA (Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Agency) has posted a notice about an intriguing planned call for tenders. Here’s the brief summary currently available online: “This call for tenders aims to speed up the development of a point-of-care

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EMA: 16m EUR to fund regulatory science research

Dear All, EMA have recently posted a call for tenders under which they seek to “procure the services of research organizations to perform studies on the quality, safety and efficacy of human and veterinary medicines that would provide complementary evidence to support regulatory decision-making.” It’s not specifically about AMR (or, indeed, about any particular therapy

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Sign-on Letter to Preserve Upcoming ACIP Meeting

Dear All, The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is scheduled to meet 26-28 Feb 2025 (see links below my signature for deeper background on ACIP and how it advises on vaccine use). At least as of today, the ACIP meeting is scheduled to occur as planned: it has a full agenda that covers meningococcal vaccine, influenza

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ESCMID 2025: Science Policy Forum and Pipeline Day events

Dear All, If you are attending ESCMID Global in Vienna this year, mark your calendar for two major events. I hope to see you at both of them! First, there will be a Science Policy Forum afternoon (with networking reception) on Friday, 11 April 2025. Refined over the past two iterations of ECCMID, this event was

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Gates/Novo Nordisk/Wellcome Grand Challenge: Gr-ADI, the Gram-Negative Antibiotic Discovery Innovator

Dear All, A huge announcement today backed by the combined power of the Gates Foundation, Novo Nordisk, and Wellcome! I am going to quote liberally from their materials: Responding to the problem of AMR, “… the Novo Nordisk Foundation (NNF), Wellcome, and the Gates Foundation (GF) are jointly launching a new initiative, Gram-Negative Antibiotic Discovery

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Jan 2025 PACCARB meeting cancelled as new administration takes the reins

Dear All, Sadly, I must report that the 27th meeting of PACCARB (the US Presidential Advisory Council on Combatting Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria) planned for 28-29 Jan 2025 has been cancelled “as the new Administration considers its plan for managing federal policy and public communications.” This 22 Jan 2025 article in the New York Times provides additional details

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Mirror Bacteria: An AMR threat of unprecedented magnitude

Dear All (wonkish but stick with it … I’m going to try very hard to de-wonk it), In an absolutely terrifying paper and technical report in today’s issue of Science, we are introduced in detail to the concept of “mirror” bacteria in which all chiral elements of the bacterium are replaced by their enantiomeric counterparts.

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WHO-GARDP: Policy interventions for (mostly acute) antibiotic shortages

Dear All, I wrote in the 1 Dec 2024 newsletter about the excellent paper by Baraldi et al. that introduced us to the 6 possible meaning of “lack of access.” Since that newsletter, a bit of back-and-forth has produced a UNSLAP as a pronounceable acronym for the 6 meanings: (U)nregistered, (N)ever registered (or, not registered),

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