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Suggested Citation:"5 General Observations." National Research Council. 2014. Technological Challenges in Antibiotic Discovery and Development: A Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18616.
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5

General Observations

Throughout the workshop, and during a final discussion session, speakers and workshop participants made general observations about the issues associated with antibiotic development to counter resistance. These observations are gathered in this final chapter to capture some of the broad themes emerging from the workshop. These themes should not be seen as consensus conclusions of the workshop and are associated with the individual or individuals who made the observation.

  • There is a need for faster methods of isolating potential antibiotics, determining their structure, and characterizing their mechanisms of action. (Aurigemma, Silver, Mobashery)
  • There is not enough interaction among the different constituencies that need to be involved in the discovery, development, and use of antibiotics: between clinicians and researchers, between medicinal chemists and biologists, between small companies developing antibiotics and large companies that take them through approval to the market. (Smeltzer, Morones-Ramirez, Silver, Aurigemma, Shaw)
  • The mechanisms by which antibiotics enter cells and bypass biophysical barriers need to be better understood. (Silver, Smeltzer)
  • The solution to antibiotic resistance lies not just with developing new molecules, but also with better stewardship of current agents as well as improved detection and control to more quickly stop the spread of infectious organisms. Training for medical professionals should be improved. Antibiotics should also be eliminated from animal feed. (Aurigemma)
  • There is a need to develop novel screening technologies to identify new targets, with awareness of prior efforts, for drug development. To a large extent, there have been no new targets for antibiotic development discovered since the late 1980s. (Silver, Shaw, Khosla)
  • Since the physiochemical properties of antimicrobial agents do not follow the same rules as other classes of pharmaceutical agents, there is a need to develop synthetic and natural product libraries specifically for antibiotic development. (Shaw)
  • The search for new antimicrobial agents should focus on molecules that bind to multiple targets or that work in combination with other drugs that target independent microbial processes. (Silver)
  • Mining and engineering secondary metabolic pathways can be a productive route to identifying antimicrobial agents with novel molecular structures and mechanisms of action. (Khosla)
Suggested Citation:"5 General Observations." National Research Council. 2014. Technological Challenges in Antibiotic Discovery and Development: A Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18616.
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Suggested Citation:"5 General Observations." National Research Council. 2014. Technological Challenges in Antibiotic Discovery and Development: A Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18616.
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Page 23
Suggested Citation:"5 General Observations." National Research Council. 2014. Technological Challenges in Antibiotic Discovery and Development: A Workshop Summary. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18616.
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Page 24
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Technological Challenges in Antibiotic Discovery and Development is the summary of a workshop convened by the Chemical Sciences Roundtable in September 2013 to explore the current state of antibiotic discovery and examine the technology available to facilitate development. Through formal presentations and panel discussions, participants from academia, industry, federal research agencies discussed the technical challenges present and the incentives and disincentives industry faces in antibiotic development, and identified novel approaches to antibiotic discovery.

Antibiotic resistance is a serious and growing problem in modern medicine and it is emerging as a pre-eminent public health threat. Each year in the United States alone, at least two million acquire serious infections with bacteria that are resistant to one or more antibiotics, and at least 23,000 people die annually as a direct result of these antibiotic-resistant infections. In addition to the toll on human life, antibiotic-resistant infections add considerable and avoidable costs to the already overburdened U.S. health care system. This report explores the challenges in overcoming antibiotic resistance, screening for new antibiotics, and delivering them to the sites of infection in the body. The report also discusses a path forward to develop the next generation of potent antimicrobial compounds capable of once again tilting the battle against microbial pathogens in favor of humans. Technological Challenges in Antibiotic Discovery and Development gives a broad view of the landscape of antibiotic development and the technological challenges and barriers to be overcome.

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