HHS has announced the formation of a public-private partnership with the Wellcome Trust of London, the AMR Centre of Alderley Park in the U.K., and Boston University School of Law that will focus on discovering and developing new antimicrobial products and combating antibiotic resistance.
Here are 10 things to know about the partnership, called Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator, or CARB-X.
1. Wellcome Trust, AMR Centre, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority within HHS and the National Institutes of Health's Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will oversee the project. The Massachusetts Biotechnology Council in Cambridge and the California Life Sciences Institute of South San Francisco will provide support for antibiotic development projects.
2. CARB-X will be headquartered at Boston University School of Law and will be led by Kevin Outterson, a health law researcher who will serve as the principal investigator.
3. Wellcome Trust will guide product developers in multiple skill sets, including medicinal chemistry, biology, pharmaceutic formulation and clinical development. It will also monitor project progress and provide business development support.
4. The AMR Centre will fund and provide capacity and capability to support programs for product developers.
5. MassBio will allow access to capital and mentoring.
6. CLSI will partner with MassBio to provide business support and mentoring services and will also share best practices with Wellcome Trust and AMR Centre.
7. RTI International in Research Triangle Park, N.C., is a CARB-X partner that will provide research support services to product developers in the partner accelerators and build and run computing systems to monitor all research programs.
8. BARDA is providing $30 million in the first year and up to $250 million through the duration of the program. The AMR Centre will provide $14 million in year one and up to $100 million in five years.
9. Starting in September, CARB-X will look at applications for funding to find the most promising products to support.
10. "Increasingly, it is becoming clear that partnerships of global reach and efficiency are needed to address complex problems like antimicrobial resistance," said Richard Hatchett, MD, acting BARDA director. "The establishment of CARB-X is a watershed moment; governments, academia, industry and nongovernment organizations have come together to operate under a common strategic framework to tackle a monumental public health threat of our time."