20 SEPTEMBER 2017 | GENEVA - A
report, Antibacterial agents in
clinical development – an analysis of the antibacterial clinical development
pipeline, including tuberculosis, launched by WHO shows a serious lack
of new antibiotics under development to combat the growing threat of
antimicrobial resistance.
Most
of the drugs currently in the clinical pipeline are modifications of existing
classes of antibiotics and are only short-term solutions. The report found very
few potential treatment options for those antibiotic-resistant infections
identified by WHO as posing the greatest threat to health, including
drug-resistant tuberculosis which kills around 250000 people each year.
"Antimicrobial
resistance is a global health emergency that will seriously jeopardize progress
in modern medicine," says Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General
of WHO. "There is an urgent need for more investment in research and
development for antibiotic-resistant infections including TB, otherwise we will
be forced back to a time when people feared common infections and risked their
lives from minor surgery."
In
addition to multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, WHO has identified 12 classes of
priority pathogens – some of them causing common infections such as pneumonia
or urinary tract infections – that are increasingly resistant to existing
antibiotics and urgently in need of new treatments.
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 pipeline, yet these are essential
formulations for treating infections outside hospitals or in resource-limited
settings.
"Pharmaceutical
companies and researchers must urgently focus on new antibiotics against
certain types of extremely serious infections that can kill patients in a
matter of days because we have no line of defence," says Dr Suzanne Hill,
Director of the Department of Essential Medicines at WHO.
To
counter this threat, WHO and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi)
set up the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (known as
GARDP). On 4 September 2017, Germany, Luxembourg, the
Netherlands, South Africa,
Switzerland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and
the Wellcome Trust pledged more than €56 million for this work.
"Research
for tuberculosis is seriously underfunded, with only two new antibiotics
for
treatment of drug-resistant tuberculosis having reached the market in over 70
years," says Dr Mario Raviglione, Director of the WHO Global Tuberculosis
Programme. "If we are to end tuberculosis, more than US$ 800 million per
year is
urgently needed to fund research for new antituberculosis
medicines".
New
treatments alone, however, will not be sufficient to combat the threat of
antimicrobial resistance. WHO works with countries and partners to improve
infection prevention and control and to foster appropriate use of existing and
future antibiotics. WHO is also developing guidance for the responsible use of
antibiotics in the human, animal and agricultural sectors.
For
more information, download the following reports:
· The
clinical pipeline analysis data can be explored in an interactive way through:
