New pipeline report by WHO

New pipeline report by WHO

  • 14/01/2022

The WHO has released a new report analyzing the current antibacterial pipeline. It has been published in ASM’s journal “Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy”.

Five years ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) together with the PEW Charitable Trust released a list comprising 12 antibiotic-resistant priority pathogens and undertook a critical review of the current antibacterial pipeline.

The now updated report investigated ‘traditional’ and ‘non-traditional’ antibacterial compounds in clinical development including activity against WHO priority pathogens, mycobacteria and Clostridioides difficile as of June 2021. Since 2017, a total of 12 new antibacterial drugs have been approved, but only vaborbactam and the cephalosporin derivative cefiderocol account for a new antibiotics class. Taken together, there were almost 80 antibacterial agents in different stages of clinical development (45 traditional and 31 non-traditional) with 28 in Phase 1, 32 in Phase 2, 12 in Phase 3 and four under regulatory evaluation. Of these, more than fifty percent had been developed against WHO priority pathogens.

The report was created by WHO in collaboration with key players in the field of antimicrobial resistance including stakeholders such as CARB-X and TB Alliance. According to experts, these results show a comparably thin pipeline of novel agents in late-stage clinical development which is mainly caused by the situation 10 years ago. Thanks to advancements in R&D funding over the recent years, most of the innovation in the AMR field can be now found in the preclinical pipeline.

Read the full report in the journal’s article here: https://journals.asm.org/doi/epdf/10.1128/AAC.01991-21