Dear All (wonkish but stick with it … I’m going to try very hard to de-wonk it), In an absolutely terrifying paper and technical report in today’s issue of Science, we are introduced in detail to the concept of “mirror” bacteria in which all chiral elements of the bacterium are replaced by their enantiomeric counterparts.
Dear All, We often talk about the problem of lack of access to new antibiotics. In late 2021, for example, we explored data showing that multi-year delays in access to new antibiotics were common even in high income countries (19 Aug 2021 newsletter with YouTube discussion). But as we’ll learn today, that analysis considers only one
Dear All (and with thanks to Kevin for co-authoring and also a wonkish alert … get your coffee and settle in for the details), If you’ve been around the antibiotic ecosystem for a while, you’ve hopefully heard the story of the 2019 bankruptcy of Achaogen and the subsequent loss to the entire world of its
Dear All (and with thanks to Kevin Outterson for being lead author on this newsletter), (wonkish alert on this one … refresh your coffee and dig in!) Bonnifield and Towse of the Center for Global Development have released a blog post and a paper estimating the potential impact of the PASTEUR Act. Here’s what you need:
Dear All, Non-traditional alternatives to antibiotics have excited a lot of interest in the past few years but we’ve seen relatively few of these progress in a meaningful way (go here for Pew’s recent survey of the development landscape). Providing insights into the challenges of this area, two valuable and complementary articles on non-traditional antibiotics have recently
Dear All (wonkish alert … but definitely worth the effort! Refill your coffee!),Ramanan Laxminarayan and about 40 colleagues from around the world have just published in the Lancet a GLORIOUS collection of papers on the theme of “Sustainable Access to Effective Antibiotics.”There are six papers in total for you to digest: An Executive Summary, four papers with
Dear All (wonk-ish note alert and also with particular thanks as always to Kevin Outterson for helping to refine this newsletter): Sparked at least in part by the innovation metrics in recent pipeline analyses (specifically, the ideas of No Cross-Resistance, New Chemical Class, New Target, and New Mechanism of Action) used in the 2018 pipeline
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 (wonkish alert: coffee up, settle in, and read the reports!), As you will recall, WHO’s most current pipeline review found that globally we do not have sufficient innovation as yet to address current or future needs (Butler et al. AAC 2022; see also this newsletter as well as the amr.solutions webpage summarizing pipeline reviews
Dear All (with thanks to Kevin as the lead author on this note and also with a wonkish note alert … refresh your coffee and settle in!), Several years ago, DRIVE-AB planted some seeds across Europe on reforming how we pay for antibiotics. As a consequence, we are seeing some hopeful sprouts in several countries: Previous newsletters