Ecraid supports WHO Industry Dialogue on Global Antibiotic Development

Bringing together global perspectives to strengthen evidence generation for novel antibiotics.

[This article has been updated on 4 September 2026]

On 31 August 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) AMR Department convened developers of antibacterial agents targeting bacterial priority pathogens for an Industry Dialogue on Evidence Generation in Global Antibiotic Development.

The webinar brought together 153 participants from industry, academia and other stakeholder groups to discuss the practical challenges of antibiotic development and to explore potential solutions.

Ecraid is proud to support the dialogue and contribute its expertise in clinical research methodology, networks and evidence generation.

Exploring Challenges and Potential Solutions

The discussion explored several challenges across the priority antibiotic development lifecycle, as well as potential solutions that could help address them, including:

Key Challenges:

Gap between clinical trials and real-world use: the patients who most need new antibiotics are the hardest to recruit, and approval is anchored to the site of infection while clinicians choose treatment by pathogen and patient,
Divergent regulatory requirements across jurisdictions, adding time and cost without necessarily improving access.

Potential Solutions:

Taking a lifecycle approach to evidence generation: For priority antibiotics, approval is the starting point of evidence generation, not the endpoint
Usage of complementary evidence generation approaches, from adaptive platform trials and clinical trial networks to rigorous use of real-world evidence

The dialogue also built on findings from registration, which captured challenges reported by antibiotic developers.

Valentijn Schweitzer, who is a Clinical Microbiologist at UMC Utrecht, presented these findings and highlighted clinical trial feasibility as one of the main challenges. He shared:

“Some of the biggest challenges developers face revolve around clinical trial feasibility, including access to hard-to-reach patient populations and patients with resistant infections. Developers also face challenges related to regulatory frameworks and methodology, including difficulties in demonstrating superiority and a lack of harmonised endpoints.”

From Dialogue to Future Guidance

The Industry Dialogue forms part of a broader process to better understand the barriers to evidence generation across the antibiotic development lifecycle, and help shape the future of evidence generation for novel antibiotics.

Ecraid CEO, Lennie Derde, says:

“Ecraid is pleased to contribute to this important work by helping to develop the analyses and background papers that will help inform future WHO guidance on evidence generation for novel antibiotics targeting bacterial priority pathogens."

"The Ecraid team looks forward to continuing to contribute its expertise to this work and supporting the development of approaches that can help accelerate evidence generation and help bring effective new antibiotics to patients.”