AvidBiotics: Punching Holes In Bacterial Resistance

Bacterial infection is a huge and growing medical burden worldwide — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are around 500 million acute bacterial infections every year that need some form of antibacterial therapy. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal in April 2011, in the United States, hospital-acquired, drug-resistant bacterial infections cost the nation $34 billion a year and kill around 63,000 patients. In Europe, the costs are around $2.1 billion, with about 400,000 infections and 25,000 or more deaths a year. Only two new antibiotic classes have emerged in the last 40 years, and while there are new antibiotics in the pipeline, these are around five or six years away from approval, and it’s only a matter of time before bacteria develop resistance to these.

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