Dear All: “Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions … and paying attention.” You’ve probably heard the first part of that before, but the “… and paying attention” is my addition and reflection upon reading Lynn Silver’s most recent commentary in the Springer Series Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, edited by Jed Fisher, Marvin
Note: See also these related newsletters: 20 Feb 2020 (link) on DTR as part of the language of resistance and 7 June 2020 (link) on using DTR to estimate antibiotic value. There is also a 5-minute DTR explainer on YouTube that you might find useful. Dear All: When thinking about studies of resistant pathogens, issues
Dear All (long, wonkish note alert!): Today we have a 3-part discussion of cost and value with this summary 3-part message: Developing antibiotics is expensive, Not having antibiotics is even more expensive, and We have to solve this! First, what does it cost to bring a new antibiotic to market? To start us off, we
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, The Duke-Margolis team hosted an excellent full-day workshop on 16 Jan 2020. Entitled “Exploring Opportunities to Reform Antimicrobial Payment and Post-Market Incentives” and chaired by Mark McClellan, the workshop’s outstanding cast of presenters and discussants provided a thorough discussion of both the need for new payment models and and the many ongoing activities focused
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, Long note alert! There are two deep and deeply connected topics to share today. Refresh your coffee and settle in… Today’s first topic: Adding to the recent reviews of the clinical stage pipeline for both traditional products (link to the Sep 2019 Pew Charitable Trusts summary), and non-traditional products (link to an Aug 2019 newsletter summarizing
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