Dear All, I realized after sending the note about Melinta’s bankruptcy that I’d failed to be clear on what comes next for the company. (If you missed it, you can go here for a copy of that prior note.) In brief, a 27 Dec 2019 press release (link) states that the bankruptcy filing exchanges $140 million of secured claims
Dear All, As part of a NIAID Omnibus Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) posted on 31 Dec 2019, NIAID’s Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (DMID, link) has three research areas (RAs) soliciting contract proposals for preclinical and clinical development of vaccines, therapeutic, and diagnostics for microbial pathogens. The entire BAA can be found here. The three RAs
Dear All (long-ish, wonk-ish note alert … lots of details to absorb): This newsletter has a followup here. Sadly, Melinta Therapeutics, Inc. declared bankruptcy just before the end of 2019 (link). Formerly known as Rib-X (link), Melinta went public in 2017 through a reverse merger with Cempra (link); and via a series of deals had four
Dear All, Warm up your chemistry set! NIAID has just released a pre-solicitation notice of their intent to request applications for a new NIAID contract intended to establish an innovative Chemistry Center for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (CC4CARB). NIAID anticipates awarding a single CC4CARB contract funding 28,000 direct labor hours per year for up to 5 years. The core
Dear All, Two important new research calls are now out. First, FDA is offering research funding of up to $1m to support creation of rabbit models of ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia (VAP or VABP, depending on your preferred abbreviation) due to carbapenem-resistant strains of A. baumannii and P. aeruginosa. The call for proposals is via FDA Broad Agency Announcement (FDABAA-20-00123N, link), an ongoing
Dear All, On Friday, 20 Dec 2020, legislation was signed to fund the US government through Sep 2020. Relevant to AMR: The bill provides a $50 million increase in funding to NIAID for antimicrobial resistance. NIAID will also have to report to Congress on the success rate for these particular grants. The bill provides funding for
Dear All, I recently learned about the designation of Stanford as a WHO Collaborating Centre (WHOCC) for AMR and Stewardship. This caused me to dig a bit more into the way that WHO has created a global network of Collaborating Centres. WHOCC designation represents a sustained and productive collaboration with WHO (link). As an example, Stanford’s
Dear All, To start your week, we have three tidbits for consideration. First, results from a trial entitled “Colistin versus meropenem in the empirical treatment of ventilator-associated pneumonia (Magic Bullet study): an investigator-driven, open-label, randomized, noninferiority controlled trial” have been published (Critical Care 23:383, 2019, link). Cisneros et al. sought to enroll 496 subjects into this trial but
Dear All, 3 Apr 2020 update: Significant additional details on the pilot were shared via a 29 Mar 2020 webinar (link to newsletter) and then a FAQ document (link to newsletter). The game is definitely afoot! The hoofbeats of the cavalry bringing us the UK NHS antibiotic subscription model are definitely getting louder! As you
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