Agencies to help fund development of new antibiotic

The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response and the Department of Defense’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency will provide funding to VenatoRx Pharmaceuticals to develop a novel antibiotic to treat infections resistant to existing antibiotics. ASPR’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority will initially provide up to $20.7 million to help develop the product and conduct clinical trials, including trials to treat hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia and carbapenem-resistant pathogens. DTRA will provide up to $10 million to test the product against antibiotic-resistant bioterrorism pathogens. “Developing new antibiotics that represent an improvement over standard of care antibiotics is essential to national health security and global health efforts to combat antibiotic-resistant infections,” said BARDA Director Rick Bright. “This unique public-private partnership will focus on adding a new tool to health care providers’ toolkits and to help them save lives in an incident involving some of the serious bioterrorism threats our country faces.”