Preserving & sharing scientific knowledge
Alongside the growing alarm over drug resistance, there is also concern around the slow rate at which new treatments are being discovered and developed. As many antibiotic researchers re-focus their activities or leave the field entirely, we risk losing precious knowledge and experience—losses that seriously impact the discovery, research, and development of urgently needed treatments.
Since 2018, GARDP’s Scientific Affairs team has worked to improve, accelerate, and streamline antibiotic discovery and R&D by facilitating learning and knowledge exchange, including by forging a strong network of world-class experts to ensure that knowledge is shared between clinical, industry, and academic researchers at all stages of their careers.
The REVIVE community
In 2018, GARDP created the REVIVE website to capture and share new and existing knowledge and skills in antibiotic discovery and R&D, as well as to support and connect this global community. We host all of our Scientific Affairs activities and outputs on REVIVE on an open-access basis worldwide.
Our Scientific Affairs team has built relationships with over 70 scientific societies and partner organizations globally, which work with us to help disseminate GARDP’s materials among the international antimicrobial R&D community. Six new societies joined our network in 2021, including the Australian Research Council (ARC) Research Hub to Combat AMR, the Federation of European Microbiological Societies (FEMS), and Students against Superbugs Africa.
Our Scientific Affairs team has built relationships with over 70 scientific societies and partner organizations globally.
revive.gardp.org
revive.gardp.org
2021 Antimicrobial Viewpoint readership
2021 Achievements
46 new REVIVE experts joined the community, which now has 148 members.
13 webinars for 2,727 participants with an average of 210 participants per webinar from 108 countries. Recordings of all our webinars are freely available on revive.gardp.org.
10 new Antimicrobial Viewpoint articles, with a total of 42 now published and readers from 149 different countries last year. All of these articles are freely available on revive.gardp.org.
Users from 198 countries have accessed the REVIVE website since 2018, with over 4,200 website views per month.
2021 PROGRESS
GARDP focuses on collaborating with partners on late-stage clinical trials to build a pipeline of new treatments. But to discover vital next-generation antibiotics, we must also address critically underfunded and neglected gaps in research and development. In 2021, GARDP’s Advancing Antibiotic R&D activities included asset development and evaluation activities in three priority areas: children’s antibiotics, sexually transmitted infections, and serious bacterial infections. Our R&D activities also progressed through Discovery and Exploratory Research (DER) and scientific partnerships.
In 2021, GARDP’s Advancing Antibiotic R&D activities included asset development and evaluation activities in three priority areas.
SCREENING
chemical compound libraries in search of potential new antibiotics with activity against drug-resistant pathogens that urgently require new treatments
DEVELOPING
GARDP’s models and
collaborations to enable the
identification of hit compounds and their prioritization for further work
IDENTIFYING
gaps in the global DER ecosystem to facilitate the exploration of opportunities for developing new discovery projects
Discovery and Exploratory Research
In 2020, GARDP evaluated ten new assets by conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses of antibiotic combinations used on carbapenem-resistant pathogens.
In April, GARDP and Venatorx Pharmaceuticals announced a collaboration for the co-development of cefepime-taniborbactam, an asset identified by the asset evaluation and development programme in 2019. We integrated this new compound into our programme for the treatment of serious carbapenem-resistant of infections.
With cefepime-taniborbactam active against two of WHO’s three carbapenem-resistant priority pathogens, our current focus is on identifying compounds that complement the activity of cefepime-taniborbactam by having the potential to cover the third: carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii.
In 2020, we evaluated four potential assets in clinical development and are having ongoing discussions with the companies that own these compounds.
The Asset Evaluation and Development team also began conducting non-clinical studies on an approved asset to determine whether it may also work as a potential treatment for STIs.
The global early diScovery
pipeline remains insufficienT
In December, GARDP published an open-access report which found that the world’s current early discovery antibacterial pipeline targeting Gram-negative drug-resistant bacteria is scientifically diverse.
Even so, our report also concluded that many discoveries cannot be developed into new drugs and, as a consequence, the discovery pipeline remains insufficient for delivering the new antibacterial treatments we desperately need.
Antimicrobial Encyclopaedia
and Library
Last year, REVIVE finalized and uploaded 99 new terms and two expert videos (with another in development) to its Antimicrobial Encyclopaedia, which now contains over 170 terms and 14 expert videos.
Antimicrobial Chemotherapy
Conference (ACC) 2021
In February 2021, GARDP hosted the widely acclaimed ACC2021 in collaboration with the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC).
Three guest organizations—the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF), Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS), and the International Research Alliance for Antibiotic Discovery and Development (IRAADD)—joined the scientific programme committee.
797 registered and 626 live participants from 63 countries (top five countries: UK, Germany, US, Switzerland, and India) attended the conference. You can access all conference recordings on revive.gardp.org.
Our next challenge?
“
In 2022, we will screen new chemical libraries identified by computational chemistry analysis and continue our hit expansion activities. The current horizon-scanning projects for antibacterial discovery research targets will identify opportunities for new discovery projects, partnerships, and collaborations. Another exciting event will be the launch of the Antibiotic Discovery & Development Roadmap, which will be hosted on REVIVE. This will provide people working on different stages of the antibiotic R&D pipeline with critical information about the entire product development pathway.
