Challenges in the discovery and development of novel antibiotics – will there be a new drug derived from natural sources?

Bacterial infections are an ongoing threat to the individual human health status as well as for the societies. The main challenge is resistance to multiple antibiotics which is spreading throughout the world induced through intensive use of existing antibiotics, seriously challenging our ability to treat bacterial infections successfully. Consequently, there is an urgent need for novel (class) antibacterial (AB) compounds without cross-resistance to antibiotics already in use. Global sales of antibiotics are substantial at $33,919m with significant growth (2005) of 8%. However, in the last two decades only very few new antibiotics reached the market; the market growth is thus dominated by the only two new AB compounds classes launched within the last two decades, Linezolide (Pfizer), and the natural product Daptomycin (Cubist). This lack in success as well as market potential resulted in a decline in R&D efforts – many big Pharma companies abandoned their AB internal programs.

What are the technical obstacles for AB discovery? What are the Market and regulatory obstacles? This presentation attempts to summarise challenges in the identification and development of new AB compounds, incl. those derived from natural sources as well as to reflect currently applied strategies to overcome them, incl. successful examples.

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