Something Different

Stewardship & Access Guide from CARB-X, Wellcome, and partners: Analysis, video chat

Dear All, Novel antibacterial agents, vaccines, and diagnostics will do little if they are not widely available and used responsibly. CDDEP’s recent report entitled “The State of the World’s Antibiotics in 2021” makes this very clear: “… more people in LMICs (low-middle-income countries) die from lack of access to antimicrobials than from resistant infection.” Hence, CARB-X has

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EPA (part 3): Streptomycin spray on citrus? Not any more!

This is the third of a 5-part newsletter series. There is an initial 27 Sep 2023 newsletter introducing the EPA concept note, a second (28 Sep 2023) newsletter that expands on the EPA concept note, a 4th newsletter (27 Jan 2024) containing some additional resources, and a fifth newsletter (11 Oct 2024) about the EPA’s collaborative framework for evaluating the AMR risks of antibacterial and antifungal

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Impact of AMR on cancer therapy

Dear All (unapologetically wonkish … very important material!), Let’s set the scene today by considering two quotes: Prosaic: “The successful treatment of patients with cancer has long depended on the capacity to manage infectious complications.” (Shropshire 2025, cited below) Blunt translation: “Your cancer will be controlled, but then you may die of infection.” (Abdul Ghafur,

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The 37,000-year view: Infections in Eurasia

Dear All (prepare for something that is delightfully different and marvelously wonkish AND with thanks to Lance Price for co-authoring this newsletter), Continuing with the theme in the 15 Aug 2025 newsletter (“Global livestock resistome: Antibiotic resistance is widespread!”) of ways to use sequencing of samples from the environment, we have today an amazing paper in

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Global livestock resistome: Antibiotic resistance is widespread!

Dear All (and with thanks to Lance Price for co-authoring this deeply wonkish newsletter), Today we turn to the idea of examining livestock manure for the presence of antibiotic resistance genes. You can easily see how this idea plays into the question of how to track and control AMR. Before we dive into the paper, however,

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Lifeline, the Musical Story of Penicillin: A Review

Dear All, Last week I went to New York City to see one of the opening performances of Lifeline, The Musical, the world’s first musical telling the story of penicillin, Sir Alexander Fleming, and the rise of antibiotic resistance! This was my first time seeing the production in its entirety and it did not disappoint. The timing

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Vaccination to prevent AMR: Insights from Wellcome

Dear All (and with thanks to Vega Masignani for co-authoring this newsletter), Waaaay back in 2019 (pre-COVID … remember that?), Wellcome put out a call for grants focused on understanding the value of vaccines in combatting AMR (4 June 2019 newsletter entitled “Why vaccines for AMR? What is their value? Grant opportunity for research on

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Vaccine development: Polytheism vs. Monotheism

Dear All (and with a wonkish alert!), The idea of more (and better) vaccines to prevent (or even be part of treating) bacterial infections has long intrigued. We certainly do have several good bacterial vaccines, but why not more? As part of this ongoing discussion, I really enjoyed a paper that came out back in

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UNSLAP: You reach for the antibiotic … and it’s not there!

Dear All (with thanks to Louise for co-authoring and with a wonkish alert … settle in for the ride!), Today’s newsletter discusses the intersection of three themes around antibiotic access. Recall first how the paper by Baraldi et al. (1 Dec 2024 newsletter) taught us that there are at least six variations to the idea

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