Anti-Infective Start-Ups See Opportunity In An Epidemiological Nightmare

Infectious disease researchers worldwide have been warning for decades of growing numbers of drug-resistant bacteria. But the situation has become less of a looming threat and more of a clear and present danger, when viewed through statistics like the number of hospitalizations and deaths associated with infection. In the US alone, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year nearly two million patients acquire an infection while in a hospital, and of these some 90,000 die. The CDC calculates that about 70% of the bacteria that cause hospital-based or “nosocomial” infections are resistant to at least one of the medicines commonly used to treat them. Gram-positive bacterium Staphylococcus aureus (SA) is a key culprit. From 1999 through 2005, US hospitalizations related to SA climbed 62%, from 294,570 to 477,927, according to researchers at the National Institutes of Health and a nonpartisan think tank called Resources for the Future. Hospitalizations caused by methicillin-resistant strains of the organism (MRSA) more than doubled in that time from 127,036 to 278,203, the researchers found.

Lately, other organisms have been vying with SA for the title of worst troublemaker. By December 2009, an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported a “worrisome shift” toward infections caused by gram-negative organisms. (A bacterium’s “gram” designation is based on its reaction to a Gram’s stain test