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, NIAID’s DMID (Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases) recently held a council meeting during which they proposed program concepts that encompassed both antibacterial therapies (including phage) as well as antifungal therapies for funding in FY 2026 (the year that would run from 1 Oct 2025 to 30 Sep 2026). There is no guarantee that
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
This newsletter is part of a series — here are the links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, (this one is Part 4), and Part 5. Dear All, We had fun in Feb 2020 discussing whether an antibacterial compound discovered using machine learning was a drug or just a chemical. Building on that conversation, the lab that wrote the
Dear All, Happy New Year! I hope you were able to relax with friends and family during the year-end festivities! I have a small backlog of notes that will follow over the next few days but for tonight we have a brief note about a funding opportunity with a short timeline. JPIAMR have today opened an
Dear All, Exciting additional news merits two newsletters in one day! I’ll keep it brief and quote directly from the website: “Innovate UK, LifeArc, and Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC) have joined forces to create PACE (Pathways to Antimicrobial Clinical Efficacy), a £30 million initiative supporting early-stage innovation against antimicrobial resistance (AMR) to save lives. PACE has today (19 October 2023) announced
Note: For those of you with an interest in developing bacterial vaccines, the results of Pfizer’s failed STRIVE S. aureus vaccine have now appeared in print along with an excellent editorial commentary. Deep sigh on this one — please see the updated prior newsletter for the links and the full story. This newsletter is part
Dear All, Some great news today! We have visible evidence of global government action in support of the addressing our antibiotic gaps. First, CARB-X has announced that Canada has now joined its coalition of funders with a pledge of $6.3m! Woot, woot! Go Team Canada! Second, the UK and Germany have renewed their funding support with commitments of GBP
Dear All, Today we have a collection of things all related to the global efforts to fight AMR. Two papers, a webinar, and a movie trailer! First, the Antibiotic Access and Use (ABACUS) project has released a very interesting paper entitled “Is this pill an antibiotic or a painkiller? Improving the identification of oral antibiotics
Dear All, I wrote in 2018 about National Cancer Institute’s Natural Products Branch (NPB) and its program for Natural Product Discovery (NPNPD) as a resource for antimicrobial discovery. In brief, it’s a global collection of natural products that is available as a library of semi-pure natural product samples that comes pre-platted in 384-well plates. The deep idea behind