Bugs & Drugs

I found that I was losing the plot about what was where! Here’s my quick guide to (i) priority pathogens (just below), (ii) drug pipeline reviews, and (iii) antibiotic manufacturing standards

Note in particular that a comparative Summary of the priority pathogens lists is provided. For my summary of incentives to support this pipeline, see this webpage. Corrections and amends gratefully received.

Priority Pathogen / Threat Lists

  • By my count, eight priority pathogen lists have been proposed / published to date; all are mainly bacterial unless otherwise noted:
    1. WHO 2024 PPL: Newsletter is here, report is here.
    2. WHO 2022 Fungal PPL: Newsletter is here, report is here.
    3. India 2021: Newsletter is here, report is here.
    4. Japan 2021: Summary in English; Extended details in Japanese
    5. CDC 2019: Newsletter is here, report itself is here.
    6. WHO 2017: Newsletter is here, report itself is here.
    7. CDC 2013: Report itself is here.
    8. ESKAPE list 2008-9: This is the grandfather/mother of them all! The original papers are here:
      • (link) Rice LB. Federal funding for the study of antimicrobial resistance in nosocomial pathogens: no ESKAPE. J Infect Dis. 2008;197(8):1079-81.
      • (link) Boucher HW et al. Bad Bugs, No Drugs: No ESKAPE! An Update from the Infectious Diseases Society of America. Clinical Infectious Diseases. 2009;48(1):1-12

To help you keep them organized, a comparative summary of the priority pathogen lists (including the 2022 WHO fungal PPL) as a PowerPoint deck is here (or here as a .pdf).

  • Please also see this newsletter for a further discussion of the priority pathogen lists as well as the idea of first- vs. best-in-class.

Pipeline Reviews (therapeutic products, unless otherwise noted)

  • Reviews by WHO
    • WHO 2023/24 preclinical and clinical pipeline review (data cut-off of 31 Dec 2023, published in 2024): My newsletter is here and WHO’s report is here. There is also a summary of the report (nice graphics!) with an editorial in Lancet Microbe.
    • WHO 2022 review of preclinical and clinical vaccines (data cut-off not stated, appears to be from 2010 forward). Here are links to the report, a press release, and a newsletter about the report.
    • WHO 2021/22 clinical pipeline review (data cut-off 30 June 2021, published in 2022): My newsletter is here and the review itself is here
    • WHO 2020 (data cut-off 1 Sep 2020): My newsletter is here (and includes a video chat with Peter Beyer, one of the key drivers of the report). The review itself is here.
    • WHO 2019: My newsletter is here, commentary by WHO staff is here, the pre-clinical pipeline review is here and is supported by a data-mining interface here; the clinical pipeline review is here.
    • WHO 2017: Newsletter is here, report is here, and manuscript about the review is here.
  • Reviews by the Pew Trusts (all updated as of March 2021; see also this newsletter)
    • Go here for traditional therapeutics.
    • Go here for a visualization of pipeline changes during 2014-2020.
    • Non-traditional products are separately summarized here.
  • Independent pipeline reviews
  • Access- and Stewardship-focused reviews
    • CDDEP’s “The State of the World’s Antibiotics Report in 2021” (link) presents extensive data on global antimicrobial use and resistance, a brief pipeline review, and by-country dashboards
    • ATMF’s “2021 Access to Medicine Index” (link) summarizes progress made and work to be done on access.

Drug Manufacturing Standards

 

NIAID RFA: Centers for Accelerating Phage Therapy (CAPT-CEP)

Dear All, I was delighted to learn today that NIAID has released RFA-AI-24-069, a notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) soliciting applications to establish Centers for Accelerating Phage Therapy to Combat ESKAPE Pathogens (CAPT-CEP). The CAPT-CEPs will focus on developing preclinical assays, tools, and models for robust phage therapy R&D and advancing phage clinical research. Applications are due

Vivli: Access to Industry’s Susceptibility Surveillance data

Dear All (and with thanks to Patricia Bradford for leading on this newsletter), Did you know you can access raw datasets of antimicrobial susceptibility surveillance data that have been generated by the pharmaceutical industry? Indeed such datasets exist and we’d like to ensure everyone is aware of their availability and potential! Background: The 20 Oct

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