Note: See also these related newsletters: 13 Jan 2019 on DTR as part of the language of resistance, 7 Jun 2020 on using DTR to estimate antibiotic value, and 25 Apr 2025 on evolving the idea of DTR to include antibiotic access. There is also a 5-minute DTR explainer on YouTube that you might find useful.
Dear All (wonkish … but worth it … get ready to follow the links!), Greetings in the new year! As a marvelous way to end the last year, the US FDA announced on 12 Dec 2025 its approval of two new oral therapies for gonorrhea, thus addressing the priority pathogen lists of both WHO (High
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 (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 (and with thanks to Kevin Outterson for co-authoring this newsletter), Just out in CID is a paper in which FDA analyzes trends in antibacterial development from 1980-2019. To fully appreciate this paper, you need to look both at it and three other papers: FDA’s paper (https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa859): Dheman N, Mahoney N, Cox EM, Farley
Dear All (wonkish but stick with it … I’m going to try very hard to de-wonk it; addendum: see also the follow-up newsletters, most recently on 22 Dec 2025), 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
Dear All (with thanks to Vega Masignani for co-authoring this newsletter), While the work needed to create new antibacterial agents is the primary topic of this newsletter, the need for vaccines of all types is definitely part of our community’s joint remit. As discussed in the 29 Mar 2021 newsletter (“Vaccines to turn back the
Dear All (wonkish alert … coffee up!), FDA held a workshop on 25 Sep 2020 on development of inhaled antifungal (AF) therapies with a focus on (i) therapies for allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis (ABPA) and severe asthma with fungal sensitization (SAFS), (ii) prophylaxis in lung transplantation, and (iii) adjunct therapy in invasive fungal lung infections (link to
Dear All (wonkish alert … get your coffee!), EFPIA have recently released a report estimating the value of a Transferable Exclusivity Extension (TEE, report, press release) that provides new generalized insights into ways to think about the value of new antibiotics and the appropriate size of the Pull rewards needed to bring that new antibiotic
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