Every year, millions of people around the world die from infections linked to bacteria that don’t respond to any drug treatments. And the problem is getting worse, fueled in part by the COVID-19 pandemic: more pathogens are finding ways to sneak around our current antibiotics.
But the fightback is on, and being led by a Boston University–based nonprofit partnership that’s spent the past eight years accelerating the development of new antimicrobials. CARB-X directs funding and expertise to companies and researchers around the world to spur innovative antibiotics, vaccines, and rapid diagnostics. And it just funded its 100th project, a promising effort to optimize new molecules that might be able to stop potentially deadly bacteria in their tracks.
