EPASGESCMID

Old Antibiotics

Discovery timeline of old antibiotics

This figure illustrates that there have been no successful discoveries of novel agents since almost 30 years.

Silver L L: Challenges of antibacterial discovery. Clin. Microbiol. Rev. 2011;24:71-109

This substantial discovery void has been caused by Big Pharma withdrawing from research in the area, even though there has certainly been recognition of the continuing need for new antibacterials to combat the rise of resistant organisms. The latest registered representatives of novel antibacterial classes, linezolid and daptomycin,  introduced in 2000 and 2003, respectively were first reported (or patented) in 1978 and 1987, respectively (see review by L. Silver, 2011)

Old antibiotics that have gained renewed interest for infections due to multidrug resistant pathogens with few or no treatment alternatives:

Additional information can be found on the AIDA website.

AIDA (PRESERVING OLD ANTIBIOTICS FOR THE FUTURE) is a European FP7 funded project (Grant Health-F3-2011-278348)