Great progress on push incentivesIn the Review on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), Lord Jim O’Neill called for a Global AMR Fund with $2 billion over five years. In the past few years, we have seen impressive efforts of new initiatives for research against drug-resistant infections, starting with BARDA, NIAID, Wellcome Trust, JPIAMR, and ND4BB’s ENABLE and TRANSLOCATION projects. In 2016, CARB-X was launched to fund and support innovative early development, GARDP joined the team as a developer, and 2018 saw the addition

     Manica Balasegaram, Executive Director, GARDP A question I’m frequently asked is “with the rise of drug-resistant infections, how does GARDP decide where to focus its efforts”? It’s a reasonable question. And our approach is simple. We consider the priority pathogens identified by World Health Organization (WHO), but also consider the needs and gaps for diseases and key populations when defining which antibiotics to develop. In this way, our efforts focus on global public health priorities and indications less

Six new antibiotics have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) over the last four years. So, at a first glance it seems that there is renewed interest in developing new antibiotics against Gram-negative pathogens. Nevertheless, all six antibiotics – ceftolozane/tazobactam, ceftazidime/avibactam, meropenem/vaborbactam, plazomicin, eravacycline, and omadacycline are improved derivatives of well-known antibiotic classes to address class-specific resistance mechanisms. Five of these antibiotics have been developed against infections mainly caused by Gram-negative pathogens, omadacycline, a tetracyline to

When I first started leading the AMR Review in 2014, I soon came to the conclusion that, if the current model wasn’t delivering new antimicrobial drugs, the solution was obvious: launch a new public purpose-focused entity dedicated to developing and producing new antimicrobials. When I shared this hunch with others, I was advised that it couldn’t be done without the major pharmaceutical companies, as they were the only ones with the expertise to produce and distribute drugs. I let this