NIAID seeks your comments as it updates its strategic research framework

Dear All:

In 2014, NIAID set out a 5-year strategic framework for research on Antimicrobial Resistance (download it here). That document laid out these 7 areas for intensive efforts to combat AMR:

1. Systems Biology and Antibacterial Resistance: New Directions for Drug Discovery–Using a holistic approach to examine molecular networks of host-pathogen interactions and global changes in response to drug exposure.
2. Harnessing the Immune System to Combat Bacterial Infections—Enhancing host immune response through immunological interventions and immunotherapeutics.
3. Disarm, But Leave Unharmed: Exploring Anti-Virulence Strategies—Targeting bacterial virulence factors without directly killing bacteria is less likely to induce selective pressure.
4. Synthetic Microbiota: An Ecobiological Approach—Designing microbial communities as biologic products to mitigate infectious diseases and their sequelae.
5. Less is Better: Diagnostics to Guide Use of Narrow-Spectrum Therapeutics—Decreasing selective pressure by enabling the use of therapeutics targeted to a pathogen or group of pathogens.
6. Exploiting Natural Predators: The Specificity of Phage Therapy—Using phage or phage-derived lysins to kill specific bacteria while preserving microbiota.
7. Teaching Old Drugs New Tricks: Extending the Clinical Utility of Antibacterial Drugs— Optimizing use of existing drugs and combination therapies to suppress emergence of resistance and minimize toxicity.

NIAID is now updating and refining its framework for 2019 and would like your comments both on ways to better pursue the above activities and on strategic approaches that should be added to the list.

Responses can be submitted here. Comments must be received on/before 8 Mar 2019.

Start thinking! All best wishes, –jr

John H. Rex, MD | Chief Medical Officer, F2G Ltd. | Expert-in-Residence, Wellcome Trust. Follow me on Twitter: @JohnRex_NewAbx. See past newsletters and subscribe for the future: https://13.43.35.2/blog/

Upcoming meetings of interest to the AMR community:

• 7 Feb 2019 (London): Opportunity to comment in person on the IACG draft recommendations. See this tweet for more details.
• 21 Feb 2019 (everywhere, 17:00-18:30 CET): GARDP-sponsored webinar entitled “NIAID Resources to Facilitate Discovery & Development of Anti-Infectives.” Register here.
• 5-6 Mar 2019 (Washington): NIAID-sponsored workshop: Vaccine strategies for endemic fungal pathogens. Register here.
• 8 Mar 2019 (everywhere): Deadline to respond to NIAID’s request for comments as its next 5-year strategic plan is produced. Go here for more.
• 14-15 Mar 2019 (Berlin): BEAM-, Novo REPAIR-, CARB-X-, DZIF-, ND4BB-ENABLE-sponsored (among a long list!) Berlin Conference on Novel Antimicrobials and AMR Diagnostics. Details here. Poster submissions are being accepted through 9 Jan (details here).
• 18 Mar 2019 (everywhere): Deadline for responding to the WHO call for data on preclinical antibiotic programs. Details here.
• 21-22 Mar 2019 (Birmingham, UK): BSAC Spring Conference.
• 26 Mar 2019 (London, UK): Sponsored by The Economist, a 1-day symposium entitled “Antimicrobial Resistance: Preventing an antibiotic apocalypse.” Register here.
• 28 Mar 2019 (everywhere, 4-5.30p GMT): GARDP-sponsored webinar entitled “Clinical development for non-developers Part 3: Antibacterial Drug Enhancer Combinations and Non-traditional Products.” Register here.
• 11-12 Apr 2019 (Amsterdam): ESGAP–SWAB (European Study Group for Antibiotic Policies – Stichting Werkgroep Antibioticabeleid) Technical Workshop on measuring quantity and quality of antimicrobial use. Register here. 
• 13-16 Apr 2019 (Amsterdam): Annual ECCMID meeting
• 16-18 Apr 2019 (Utrecht): ICOHAR, International Conference on One Health Antimicrobial Resistance. Organized by the ESCMID Study Group for Veterinary Microbiology (ESGVM).
• 24-26 Apr 2019 (Boston): Annual SHEA (Soc. for Hospital Epidemiology of America) Spring meeting
• 6-11 May 2019 (Ljubljana, Slovenia): 37th Annual Meeting of the European Society for Paediatric Infectious Diseases (ESPID). Details here.
• 3-6 Jun 2019 (Philadelphia): Annual BIO meeting
• 10-11 June 2019 (Research Triangle Park, NC): AMR Action Summit on R&D and Commercialization. Sponsors include the British-American Business Council, the UK Gov’t, CARB-X, the NC Biotechnology Center, and others. Details here.
• 20-24 June 2019 (San Francisco): Annual ASM Microbe meeting.
• [Mark your calendar now!] 3-6 Sep 2019 (Boston). Annual ASM-ESCMID Conference on Antibiotic Development. The Bootcamp series will continue on 3 Sep with the main meeting on 4-6 Sep. Mark your calendar now and check back here for details.
• 6-8 Sep 2019 (Bilbao, Spain): 5th ESCMID conference on Vaccines. Check back here for details.
• 2-6 Oct 2019 (Washington, DC): IDSA’s annual IDWeek meeting.
• 19-27 Oct 2019 (Annecy, France): International Course on Antibiotics and Resistance (ICARe) – A soup-to-nuts intensive residential training program on all things AMR, especially R&D for new antibiotics. See this link for details.
• [Mark your calendar now!] 1-6 Mar 2020 (Il Ciocco, Tuscany, Italy): GRC on Antibacterial Discovery and Development: “Now is the time to re-boot antibiotic R&D before it’s too little, too late.” Not yet online, but the date is firm. Will share a link when it becomes available.