NIAID has awarded approximately $5 million in funding for 24 research projects seeking to develop non-traditional therapeutics for bacterial infections.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded approximately $5 million in funding for 24 research projects seeking to develop non-traditional therapeutics for bacterial infections to help address the growing health threat of antibiotic resistance. Advancing new therapeutic options to combat drug-resistant bacteria is a key goal of the President’s National Action Plan for Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria (link is external).

“The discovery, development and deployment of antibiotics have transformed medicine; however, microbes continually evolve and become resistant to these lifesaving drugs,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “New strategies are desperately needed to treat patients with antibiotic-resistant infections that often are deadly. These new NIAID grants will provide funding to researchers developing unique, non-traditional therapies that could complement or even replace currently available antibiotics that are losing effectiveness.”

Increasing resistance to antibiotics coupled with the slow pace of new antibiotic development threatens to erode the past 70 years of progress in fighting life-threatening bacterial infections. The overuse and abuse of antibiotics drives this issue and, as a consequence, bacteria adapt to antibiotics designed to destroy them, making the drugs less effective and allowing antibiotic-resistant strains to survive and multiply.

Continue reading at: http://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/new-nih-awards-will-support-development-therapeutic-alternatives-traditional-antibiotics