Abstract
The clinical pipeline continues to be insufficient to contain antimicrobial resistance, and further investment and research is needed to ensure that a robust pipeline is built to treat the WHO priority pathogens list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. To shed light further upstream on the preclinical pipeline the WHO has undertaken a review of the antibacterial preclinical pipeline and published the data of all identified projects in a publicly accessible database. The database captures 252 unique antibacterial agents in preclinical development being developed by 145 individual institutions, of which the majority are smaller biotech companies and academic institutions. There is a higher degree of innovation in the preclinical pipeline with a significant number of non-traditional approaches being pursued. For even a fraction of these projects to reach clinical development or the market, there is a need to shift the market dynamics for new antibacterials through the identification of new solutions beyond push and pull incentives.
Highlights
Antibiotic resistance continues to be a global public health issue causing a heavy burden on health-care systems
The emergence of resistance is a natural phenomenon in bacterial pathogens, this has been accelerated through overuse and misuse of existing antibiotics resulting in treatment failures for both common and complicated infections
Following the cleaning of the data collected including removal of duplicates and verification of data obtained, 252 unique antibacterial agents in preclinical development developed by 145 individual institutions
Summary
Antibiotic resistance continues to be a global public health issue causing a heavy burden on health-care systems. In order to identify the priority resistant bacteria for which new treatments were urgently needed, in 2017 the World Health Organization (WHO) published the WHO priority pathogens list to focus research and development efforts on existing and future treatment gaps [3]. As identified in the 2019 update of the WHO clinical antibacterial pipeline analysis, the current clinical antibacterial pipeline remains insufficient to counter the rise and spread of resistant bacteria [4]. It is dominated by new agents of existing antibiotic classes offering relatively incremental improvement with very few new innovative products being developed against the critical priority pathogens. The data is available on the WHO Global Observatory for Health Research and Development and will be updated on an annual basis [6]
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