R&D Insight

Antibacterial R&D is very hard! Two great pipeline reviews + an Industry-level view

Dear All (and with thanks to Stephan Harbarth for co-authoring this newsletter), A new review by Ursula Theuretzbacher and colleagues from GARDP provides an opportunity to (i) discuss the preclinical antibacterial pipeline (the new paper), (ii) remind you of a recent review of the Gram-negative clinical pipeline, and (iii) share an excellent Industry-level perspective on

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AMR in India: A possible global future unless we act now!

Dear All, On 26 Nov 2026, the Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance & Research Initiative (AMRSRN) of the Indian Council on Medical Research (ICMR) released its report on AMR across India for 2024. The report is the eighth since AMRSRN started publishing such reports in 2017; the report for 2024 is here and links to all the prior reports

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Leaving the lab: The decline in AMR R&D professionals

Dear All, The AMR Industry Alliance has today released a fascinating and disturbing report. Entitled “Leaving the Lab: Tracking the Decline in AMR R&D Professionals” (press release, report itself), its key message of “Researchers Are Leaving the AMR Field – Even as the Threat Rapidly Grows” is illustrated vividly by the report’s graphics. I’m going

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FDA RFPs: Susceptibility breakpoints and external controls for invasive fungal infections

Dear All, I just today learned that FDA has posted two antimicrobial resistance-related (AMR-related) FY 2026 funding opportunities. The titles for the RFPs are very good descriptions of each and I’ve added a few details from the RFPs: Request for Proposals to Facilitate Development of Susceptibility Test Interpretive Criteria (STIC or Breakpoints) for Candida auris

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Manufacturing underpins both access and stewardship: Cefiderocol as a case study

Update: There is a 14 April 2025 follow-up to this newsletter. Dear All, Prompted by an excellent talk by GARDP’s Jennifer Cohn at last week’s ASM-ESCMID Developer’s conference, today I’d like to pull together several threads showing how responsible manufacturing and access are intertwined. (And if you missed the ASM-ESCMID meeting, you missed some great

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Manufacturing underpins access in LMICs: An update on cefiderocol

Dear All, No one is safe until we’re all safe! In the 7 April 2025 newsletter on antibiotic access (“UNSLAP: You reach for the antibiotic … and it’s not there!”), Louise Norton-Smith and I concluded that we need to work to address all the elements of the long and delicate supply chain from manufacturing to local

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Antibiotic supply chains: Challenges & Opportunities

Dear All, In a report entitled Understanding the Antibiotic Manufacturing Ecosystem: A view of global supply chains, pressure points, and implications for antimicrobial resistance response, the Boston Consulting Group and Wellcome Trust have examined at length the questions of (i) how the #FireExtinguishersOfMedicine are made and (ii) how they can be made with the least impact

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De-risking vaccine development: Insights spanning decades of experience

Dear All (with thanks to Vega Masignani for co-authoring this newsletter), While the work needed to create new antibacterial agents is the primary topic of this newsletter, the need for vaccines of all types is definitely part of our community’s joint remit. As discussed in the 29 Mar 2021 newsletter (“Vaccines to turn back the

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