There is a follow-up to this note. Go here to read it. Dear All: I don’t like writing about doom and gloom, but a sequence of events in the past few days really drives home both the importance of the work we do to create new antibiotics as well as the fragile state of the ecosystem supporting
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 (wonkish note alert — refresh your coffee before proceeding — with thanks to Kevin Outterson for co-authoring this note!), The intertwined questions of (i) the cost to develop a new antibiotic and (ii) how much we should pay for such a new antibiotic have been an increasingly frequent newsletter topic, with a real
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
Notes: Newsflash … BARDA have opened their long-running BAA-18-100-SOL-00003 to include support for antifungal agents. Search for “antifungal” in the posted .pdf to find the text. The first deadline for proposals is 15 Dec 2022 and further deadlines will doubtless follow: as shown on page 9, this BAA has offered 4 deadlines/year since 2018! Dear All, In
Dear All, See also this related newsletter: 14 Jul 2022, entitled “WHO Vaccine Pipeline Review; CDC On Impact Of COVID On AMR.” As part of their Immunization Agenda 2030: A Global Strategy to Leave No One Behind, WHO have now published an AMR-focused action framework that summarizes ways we should seek to use vaccines both
Dear All (wonkish but intended for everybody to read and absorb): 27 Jan 2021 update: This topic now has its own YouTube video! As the ideas here are VERY confusing, I suggest you make the time to watch the video, read the newsletter, and then watch the video one more time. I have yet to
Dear All (and with thanks to Kevin for leading the charge on this newsletter), While listening to last week’s BEAM-sponsored AMR Conference (really a wonderful conference, thank you Team BEAM, go here to listen to the sessions), we tumbled onto a really, really disturbing trend: New antibiotics are not being registered or sold in Europe in
Aside: If you’ve enjoyed the prior discussions of movies to inspire antibiotic R&D and very apropos given the theme of today’s newsletter, please check out the newly released 4-minute YouTube discussion of a scene from Master and Commander in which antibiotics could have saved a young man’s arm! Dear All (Wonkish alert! There’s a lot of
Dear All, It’s been a busy 48 hours .. three (and a half) things for you! First up, you will find notes below my signature on today’s “Antimicrobial Resistance: Examining an Emerging Public Health Threat” hearing in the US House of Representatives. The recording of today’s hearing is now available on YouTube. It was a fabulous 2 hours
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