Hav­ing of­fered fi­nan­cial sup­port to com­pa­nies de­vel­op­ing an­tibi­otics and fight­ing an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance, Boehringer In­gel­heim is launch­ing its own.

The Ger­man phar­ma is team­ing up with Evotec — the drug dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment play­er with whom it al­ready has a long-run­ning R&D al­liance in oth­er ar­eas — and French di­ag­nos­tic com­pa­ny bio­Mérieux to start a joint ven­ture that will cre­ate both next-gen an­timi­cro­bials and di­ag­nos­tics to tack­le in­fec­tious dis­eases.

Au­robac, as the joint ven­ture will be known, wants to shift from what it calls broad spec­trum and un­fo­cused med­i­cines to a pre­ci­sion ap­proach pow­ered by tar­get­ed modal­i­ties. Un­der this par­a­digm, clin­i­cians could al­so make use of di­ag­nos­tics to “quick­ly iden­ti­fy pathogens and their re­sis­tance pat­terns,” al­low­ing them to make de­ci­sions ac­cord­ing­ly.

Armed with €40 mil­lion (close to $41 mil­lion) in ini­tial fund­ing, Au­robac will be head­quar­tered in Ly­on, France.

Glob­al pub­lic health ad­vo­cates have long warned about the loom­ing threat of “su­per­bugs” that are re­sis­tant to all avail­able an­tibi­otics, which can cre­ate a dire world where even rou­tine sur­gi­cal pro­ce­dures could be life-threat­en­ing. Per an es­ti­mate, an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance could ac­count for as many as 10 mil­lion deaths per year by 2050, “mak­ing it po­ten­tial­ly dead­lier than can­cer,” said Michel Pairet, head of Boehringer In­gel­heim’s in­no­va­tion unit.

At the urg­ing of the WHO, a hand­ful of heavy­weight phar­ma play­ers in­clud­ing Pfiz­er, Eli Lil­ly, Mer­ck, John­son & John­son, Boehringer and GSK pooled to­geth­er the AMR Ac­tion Fund. Boehringer in­vest­ed €50 mil­lion in the fund and its cor­po­rate ven­ture arm has com­mit­ted to pour up to €12 mil­lion in­to AMR in­fec­tion com­pa­nies.

“The grim prospect of a post-an­tibi­ot­ic era has many caus­es but on­ly one so­lu­tion: The de­vel­op­ment of new, tar­get­ed, and ef­fec­tive an­timi­cro­bial ther­a­pies,” Evotec CEO Wern­er Lan­thaler said in a state­ment.

As the lead in­vestor, Boehringer is con­tribut­ing €30 mil­lion while Evotec and bio­Mérieux adds €5 mil­lion each.

Evotec brings re­search ex­per­tise with more than 200 sci­en­tists on the an­tibac­te­r­i­al R&D team, while bio­Mérieux will spear­head the de­vel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­iza­tion of di­ag­nos­tics. Boehringer chimes in on drug dis­cov­ery and clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment.

In ad­di­tion to de­vel­op­ing new treat­ments, bio­Mérieux echoed ex­perts in not­ing that an ap­pro­pri­ate use of an­tibi­otics would be cru­cial to sus­tain an­tibi­ot­ic ef­fi­ca­cy for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

The Federal Trade Commission has gotten involved in a patent feud over Supernus’ Parkinson’s drug Apokyn, a case the agency said may have ‘‘significant implications” for patients who rely on the drug.

Sage Chemical won the first generic approval for its Apokyn formulation (also known as apomorphine hydrochloride injection) back in 2022. The non-ergoline dopamine agonist is approved to treat Parkinson’s symptoms during “off episodes,” such as difficulty moving, tremors and intense cramping. However, regulators specified that the approval pertained to the generic drug cartridges only, not the injector pen required for administration.

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) last year sought to find ways to better coordinate large-scale clinical trials in the US — as the UK lead by example during the pandemic — especially for these emergency clinical trials.

The lobbying group PhRMA Tuesday called for more clinical trial diversity in underserved areas, including by making participation less of a burden, and expanding eligibility criteria when appropriate.

President Joe Biden yesterday signed into law a bill requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information on the origins of Covid-19 within 90 days.

The new law directs the federal government to “declassify any and all information relating to potential links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origin of the Coronavirus Disease 2019”, including information regarding researchers at the lab who fell ill in the fall of 2019 like names, symptoms, and job roles.