WHO wants to hear from all pre-clinical antibiotic developers (18 Mar 2019 deadline)

​Dear All:

Are you doing preclinical antibiotic R&D? If so, WHO wants to hear from you! As you know, WHO has published these two analyses of priority pathogens and antibacterial agents currently in Phases 1-3:

• Prioritization of pathogens to guide discovery, research and development of new antibiotics for drug resistant bacterial infections, including tuberculosis (2017, link) 
• Antibacterial agents in clinical development – an analysis of the antibacterial clinical development pipeline, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis (2017, link)

Based on the above, WHO now seeks to build a comprehensive high-level picture of the preclinical landscape. WHO plans to summarize the information as guidance and encouragement for private and public funders, the Global AMR R&D Hub, governments and other relevant stakeholders. To get involved:

• Companies, institutions and individuals are invited to submit data on their pre-clinical pipeline products that target the WHO Priority Pathogens, TB, and/or Clostridium difficile.
• Submit your data here: https://www.who.int/medicines/access/antimicrobial_resistance/en/
• Deadline for submission is 18 March 2019.

This is a timely initiative and should be helpful in identifying gaps in the community’s work, opportunities for collaboration, and more. Please participate! For more details, you can contact Sarah Paulin (paulins@who.int).

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:

• 4-5 Feb 2019 (London): Hamied Foundation UK-India Antimicrobial Resistance Meeting 2019. This is a 2-day meeting focused on building research links between the UK and India with the specific aim of jointly addressing the challenge of AMR. Register here.
• [NEW] 5-6 Mar 2019 (Washington): NIAID-sponsored workshop: Vaccine strategies for endemic fungal pathogens. Register here.
• 14-15 Mar 2019 (Berlin): BEAM-, CARB-X-, Novo REPAIR-, 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).
• [NEW] 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 2018 (REVIVE webinar, 4-5.30p GMT): “Clinical development for non-developers Part 3: Antibacterial Drug Enhancer Combinations and Non-traditional Products.” Register here.
• [NEW] 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 2018 (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.