BioCentury
ARTICLE | Strategy

Rediscovering antibiotics

November 29, 2012 8:00 AM UTC

The implementation of the Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now Act and other recent efforts to speed antibiotic development will only be successful if they encourage new chemical approaches that address the dearth of new chemical classes in the antibiotics pipeline. Antibiotic developers contacted by SciBX said solving bacteria-specific challenges including rapidly emerging resistance and highly active drug export will be addressed only by investing in new structure-guided synthesis and screening programs.

Increased regulatory scrutiny by the FDA and a lack of clear financial motivation have taken their toll on the development of new antibiotics, with a trend of decreasing approvals over the past 30 years1 (see "Antibiotic approvals over the last three decades in five-year increments")...