Recent seizures of fake medical products being marketed in the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the need to curb the growing international trade in counterfeit drugs that’s putting hundreds of thousands of lives at risk, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned this week.
Adding further evidence about the global threat of the increase of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) infections and dearth of new antibiotics to treat those conditions, Thomas Cueni, chair of the AMR Industry Alliance, said the findings from the alliance’s newly released report are “a wake-up call” as they estimate current investments in AMR-relevant R&D are not enough to sustain a viable pipeline that will be needed to combat infectious diseases globally.
LONDON – Novo Repair has made new investments of $12 million, bringing the total invested by the specialist anti-infectives venture capital fund since it was set up two years ago to plug the gap in the early stage pipeline to $48 million.
The warning bells about the global threat of the rise of antimicrobial-resistant (AMR) infections and dearth of new antibiotics seem to have been ringing for several years now. However, the prospects of companies developing new antibiotics, buoyed by regulatory incentives and grant funding, should on the face of it be an attractive proposition for investors.
A new web-based tool allowing rapid in silico prediction of the ability of candidate antibiotics to accumulate in gram-negative bacteria should enable subsequent prioritization of new compounds for synthesis and further evaluation, U.S. researchers reported Nov. 18, 2019, in Nature Microbiology.
Shanghai-based Micurx Pharmaceuticals Inc. is preparing to file an NDA for its lead antibacterial candidate, contezolid, with China's National Medical Products Administration after results of a pivotal phase III trial there showed the drug providing comparable clinical cure rates to linezolid for complicated skin and soft tissue infections (cSSTI). Reduced hematologic toxicity for the tablet-based antibiotic vs. linezolid was also seen, highlighting one of contezolid's key advantages.
DUBLIN – Shares in Polyphor AG dropped as much as 21% Wednesday as the company shut down two phase III trials of its lead drug candidate, murepavadin, a first-in-class intravenous antibiotic in development for hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia (HABP/VABP).
It has been acknowledged by governments around the world that there are simply not enough antibiotics currently in the product pipeline to meet the predicted requirements of their health care systems. Not good news considering that antibiotic resistance continues to be a major societal concern, with the CDC estimating that in the U.S. alone at least 2 million people contract an antibiotic-resistant infection, and at least 23,000 people die annually as a result.
NEW YORK – While listening to panelists during the BIO CEO & Investor conference discuss the current state of the opioid epidemic, it occurred to me that there was something about this narrative that seems familiar. I feel like I’ve written this story before. And I have. About 10 or 12 years ago. Only then, instead of pain drugs, it was antibiotics. Despite the need for new antimicrobial treatments to combat the growing resistance problem, many companies were shying away from antibiotic drug development. Part of that was due to the shifting regulatory landscape at the FDA regarding noninferiority studies....
I’m terrified of hospitals. Not so many years ago, this would have been an absurd remark. With doctors and high-tech medical care all around, a hospital seemed like one of the safer places in the world to be. But then, not so many years ago, age-related macular degeneration likely would have blinded many patients, as it did my late grandfather, pre-Macugen, pre-Lucentis. Things change, and not always for the better. The rise of resistant infections, especially the hospital-haunting and deadly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) has kept drug developers scrambling for new weapons against this bug and others. Until lately, the...
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