Meeting Background:

With rising antibiotic resistance becoming an issue of global concern, the Clinical Trials Transformation Initiative (CTTI) convened a 2-day Antibacterial Drug Development Workshop on October 11-12, 2012 in Crystal City, VA. The workshop is part of a series of expert meetings to explore approaches for accelerating the development of new antibacterial drugs. The two topics of focus for this meeting were exploring a new paradigm for antibacterial drug development in areas of unmet need, and for the treatment of patients with pneumonia that develops in the hospital or while on a ventilator.  This workshop followed a think tank on statistical issues that was held on August 20, 2012, in Bethesda, MD, also hosted by CTTI.

There is an urgent need to develop new antibacterial drugs to treat patients with infections caused by bacteria that are resistant to available antibiotics.  Antibiotic resistance has been increasing, creating an unmet public health need.  This workshop was held in collaboration with FDA’s newly formed Antibacterial Drug Development Task Force within the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER).

The purpose of the workshop was to understand the challenges in the development of new antibacterial drugs for the treatment of patients with unmet medical need (e.g., patients with multi-drug resistant bacterial infections, who have limited or no options for treatment) and to identify potential solutions that would accelerate the drug development process.  Novel endpoints and possible solutions to challenges in trial design for the development of new antibacterial drugs that treat patients with hospital-acquired or ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia (HABP and VABP) were also explored. A broad range of stakeholders participated in the meeting, including experts from academic institutions, hospitals, pharmaceutical industry, government, and patient advocacy groups.

“The workshop provided an excellent opportunity to discuss new development pathways for antibiotic drugs targeting infections for which we urgently need new antibiotic therapies.  Our collaboration with CTTI on this work is part of the CDER Antibacterial Drug Development Task Force’s efforts to accelerate the development of new antibiotics to address critical patient needs”, said Edward Cox, MD, Director of the CDER’s Office of Antimicrobial Products.

Meeting Objectives:

The goal of the first day of the workshop was to define potential pathways and explore new paradigms to accelerate the development of new antibacterial drugs that would address unmet medical need, including discussing acceptable levels of uncertainty related to the risks and benefits of such treatments. The second day focused on issues in clinical trial design including endpoints and operational efficiencies specific to the development of antibacterial drugs for treating patients with hospital-acquired or ventilator-associated bacterial pneumonia (HABP/VABP).