WHO: Antibiotics in an Emergency! A Review of Current R&D Situation of Global Antibiotics (1)

Background

A report titled Antibacterial Agents in Clinical Development: An analysis of the antibacterial clinical development pipeline, including tuberculosis issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) recently shows a serious lack of new antibiotics under development to combat the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance.

The report identifies 51 new antibiotics and biologicals in clinical development to treat priority antibiotic-resistant pathogens, as well as tuberculosis and the sometimes deadly diarrhoeal infection Clostridium difficile. Among all these candidate medicines, however, only 8 are classed by WHO as innovative treatments that will add value to the current antibiotic treatment arsenal.

There is a serious lack of treatment options for multidrug- and extensively drug-resistant M. tuberculosis and gram-negative pathogens, including Acinetobacter and Enterobacteriaceae (such as Klebsiella and E.coli) which can cause severe and often deadly infections that pose a particular threat in hospitals and nursing homes. There are also very few oral antibiotics in the development, yet these are essential preparations for treating infections outside hospitals or in resource-limited settings.

WHO calls for dealing with the global drug-resistant bacterial infections. The continuous increase of the antibiotic resistance may be the most serious problem that the global medical community is faced with at present, and if no measure is taken, it may cause the death of tens of millions of people every year by 2050.

Antibiotic significance and resistance

Antibiotics contributed a great share in treating various infectious diseases in recent history of mankind. The British scientist Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928 became a great revolution in the medical history, and thereafter, scientists successively discovered many drugs that could control bacterial, viral and other microbial infections and collectively called them antibiotics. The continuous discovery and wide application of antibiotics have opened a way for mankind to fight against infectious diseases, however, new drug-resistant bacteria emerge due to frequent and unnecessary use of antibiotics. We can see that antibiotics are a double-edged sword, from the drug resistance occurrence and development.

According to a study issued by JAMA in 2016, about 262 million patients received antibiotic treatment in outpatient service between 2010 and 2011, but it was inappropriate for about 30% thereof to receive such treatment as mentioned by the report. According to data of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the antibiotic resistance affects about 2 million people and causes death of 23,000 every year in the U.S. alone.

The situation is more severe in China: China has become the country with the worst abuse of antibiotics in the world, with annual production of 210,000t antibiotics, export of 30,000t, and others all for sale in the country, with consumption of 138g per person, 10 times that of the U.S. This makes one ponder what else new drugs we will have to fend against bacterial and viral infections in the future.

We shall pay attention to research of antibacterial agent resistance, research of new targets of the new-generation antibacterial agents, and discovery and development strategies for new antibiotics, in the face of the challenges of antibiotic development in the 21^st century.

Keep Reading: WHO: Antibiotics in an Emergency! A Review of Current R&D Situation of Global Antibiotics (2)