| Dear All: Just in case you missed the 30 March annoucement, see at right a snapshot of the first 11 Powered by CARB-X funded companies. Initial funding is $24m, with potentially a further $24m if the companies hit their milestones. With the funds provided by the companies themselves, the total potential investment is $75m. This is just the start: CARB-X has funds sufficient to do this about another 10 times. Further funding decisions will be announced later this year … it will be a steady drumbeat of funding as we go forward. |  |
This group of eleven initial companies is remarkably diverse. One company has a very rapid bedside diagnostic. The other 10 encompass 3 potential new classes of small molecule antibiotics, 4 non-traditional products, and 7 new bacterial targets. The projects range from very early to Phase 1.
In parallel, I am now attending the SDRI (Solutions for Drug-Resistant Infection) meeting in Brisbane. Dame Sally Davies has just opened the meeting with an outstanding summary both of the challenge and of the level of international focus. This has been followed by a frankly terrifying talk by Jason Gale (Bloomberg News) in which he reviews his Dec 2016 story entitled How Antibiotic-Tainted Seafood From China Ends Up on Your Table.
I can’t say it enough times … all of you who are working on new therapies (especially those for Gram-negative bacteria) need to get really, really, REALLY busy.
Best wishes, –jr
John H. Rex, MD | Chief Medical Officer, F2G Ltd. | Chief Strategy Officer, CARB-X | Expert-in-Residence, Wellcome Trust. Follow me on Twitter: @JohnRex_NewAbx