This newsletter is part of a series — here are the links to Part 1, Part 2, (this one is Part 3), Part 4, and Part 5. Dear All, As a coda to the two newsletters on Chemicals, Drugs, and Halicin (link and link), XKCD gets the final word: Image reproduced with permission from https://xkcd.com/1217/. And, you might
Dear All, I wrote in the 4 Oct 2025 newsletter about WHO’s updated reviews of antibacterial therapeutics and diagnostics. Team WHO have now released dashboard versions of the reports: Preclinical pipeline dashboard Clinical pipeline dashboard Underlying .xlsx dataset And for reference, don’t forget that you can find a comparative summary of the priority pathogen lists on this
Dear All, WHO have just (2 Oct 2025) released a pair of reports on therapeutics and diagnostics for bacterial pathogens, with a focus on how these advance our tools for priority bacterial pathogens. Here are the links you need: WHO 2025 update on the preclinical and clinical antibacterial pipeline Title: “Analysis of antibacterial agents in
Dear All, When I wrote earlier this year (23 Jan 2025 newsletter) that the January 2025 PACCARB meeting (Presidential Advisory Council on Combatting Antimicrobial Resistant Bacteria) had been cancelled, we had all hoped this would be a transient adjustment and that the very important work of PACCARB would resume in due course. Unfortunately, this has
Dear All, I wrote previously (23 Sep 2025 newsletter, “EU’s €253 million, 10-year One Health AMR (OHAMR) Initiative”) about OHAMR (European Partnership on One Health AMR ), the 10-year AMR funding initiative that is the successor to the JPIAMR program. OHAMR have now announced that they will be opening a call on 18 Nov 2025 with
Dear All (and with thanks to Frédéric Peyrane for leading on this newsletter): You will know that we eagerly watching the work in the EU on implementing a set of pull incentives based on use of ‘transferable data exclusivity voucher’ (TEV), also referred to as a ‘transferable exclusivity extension voucher’ (TEEV). In brief, the concept is that a TEEV
Dear All (wonkish but stick with it … I’m going to try very hard to de-wonk it; addendum: see also the follow-up newsletter mentioned below), 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
Dear All (unapologetically wonkish … very important material!), Let’s set the scene today by considering two quotes: Prosaic: “The successful treatment of patients with cancer has long depended on the capacity to manage infectious complications.” (Shropshire 2025, cited below) Blunt translation: “Your cancer will be controlled, but then you may die of infection.” (Abdul Ghafur,
Dear All, Earlier this year (20 Apr 2025 newsletter), Vivli announced their 2025 AMR Surveillance Data Challenge. Funded by Johnson & Johnson, Paratek, Pfizer and a National Institutes of Health (NIH) award1 the goal of this challenge is to produce new insights using existing industry AMR surveillance data. This is the third challenge issued by Vivli,
Dear All (and with thanks to Betsy Trainor for co-authoring), The idea of the STEDI values of an antibiotic (its fire extinguisher-like values) comes up often. As a reminder, the STEDI values are Spectrum, Transmission, Enablement, Diversity, and Insurance. As a good example, consider Enablement: knowing that an antibiotic exists as a backup makes safe