History’s deadliest infectious disease has a new adversary. Although many think of tuberculosis as a disease of the past, it still kills 1.2 million people annually. Last month, scientists at Texas A&M AgriLife Research published a study in Nature, revealing that they had developed a new compound that could be a tuberculosis treatment breakthrough. The…
New technique could help solve the antibiotic resistance problem
Antibiotic resistance is a growing global issue. According to the CDC, antibiotic resistance was associated with almost 5 million deaths in 2019. In the U.S., more than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur annually, killing more than 35,000 people. Researchers at Rockefeller University developed a platform to identify drug resistance genes in the environment before they…
The transformation of precision medicine in infectious disease
Before Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin, another more selective antibacterial agent rose to popularity in the early 1900s: bacteriophage. In 1917, microbiologist Felix d’Herelle was tasked with identifying the cause of a dysentery outbreak impacting French troops. From his research, he noticed that Shigella bacteria was the primary culprit of this affliction. He then discovered an…
Biopharmaceutical companies pledge more than $1 billion to develop new antibiotics
More than 20 biopharmaceutical companies around the world have pledged more than $1 billion toward the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Action Fund that launched today. Pledges include $100 million from Pfizer and $50 million from Boehringer Ingelheim. An initiative of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), the fund’s goal is to bring two to four…