Despite the many health system challenges faced by resource-poor LMICs, access to new antibiotics used in the treatment of multi-drug resistant (MDR) and extensively-drug resistant (XDR) bacterial infections should be a fundamental right, which must be achieved in order to ensure equity in clinical management of bacterial infection for a global community. Historically this has not been achieved, but rather populations in high income countries have benefitted, first and foremost. This basic right will need to be enabled by

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a massive and growing concern worldwide. What can stop it? It is a complex and far-reaching problem with no easy answers, but we are trying to take important first steps. The REPAIR Impact Fund was launched on the 28th of February 2018. With the first year behind us, I reflect on some surprising lessons learned, thoughts about the future, and finally a more personal perspective. As one of the largest dedicated for-profit life science investors,

The R&D pipeline for new antibacterials to treat increasingly resistant bacterial infections is virtually dry. Very few classes of new antibiotics in particular to treat Gram-negatives have come to the market since the “golden age” of antibiotic discovery. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) global analysis of the clinical pipeline against the priority pathogens in 2017 and 2018 showed that the current pipeline is not very promising to keep up with the evolving resistant bacterial infections with only one of

Great progress on push incentives In 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

     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

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

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