3D illustration of Gram negative bacteria.

Innovating Treatments To Address the Global Public Health Burden of Infectious Diseases

Rapidly spreading pathogens are a global risk. We are addressing these health threats by building a pipeline of novel therapies for patients worldwide.

Mission

Addressing Antimicrobial Resistance

There are hundreds of known bacterial and fungal pathogens.1, 2 With antimicrobial resistance (AMR) adversely impacting healthcare worldwide, there’s an urgency to act. Meanwhile, the antibiotic R&D pipeline has continued to decline, heightening the unmet need to develop new treatments.3 Our pipeline is focused on addressing this challenge, dedicated to creating clinically proven anti-infectives.

Antibiotic Resistance: Lots of Small Problems Have Become a Big Problem

In the aggregate, antibiotic resistance is a big problem. However, from a drug discovery and innovation perspective, it is useful to think about the big problem of antibiotic resistance as many small problems, since antimicrobial-resistant pathogens often require targeted solutions. While the annual number of cases varies across pathogens, infections due to individual antibiotic-resistant pathogens considered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to be serious or urgent threats typically impact fewer than 100,000 persons per year in the U.S.4 As such, discovering and developing new antibiotics can be analogous to the challenge of finding new drugs for orphan or rare diseases. Rather than treating all antimicrobial-resistant pathogens with a single solution, we need a continuous supply of new antibiotics that target one or more pathogens with emerging resistance.

Science

The Need for New Active Anti-Infectives

While inappropriate use of anti-infectives in settings where they aren’t needed can accelerate drug resistance, it is important to recognize that even appropriate use of anti-infectives in life-saving situations can lead to drug resistance over time.5 Improving anti-infective use practices, while important, is not enough. There will never be a time when we do not need to improve current anti-infectives and develop new therapies for drug-resistant bacteria. As pathogens continue to evolve, scientists must also continually innovate to develop anti-infectives that give patients the greatest opportunity to survive infections.

Infections don’t just occur within hospitals. They are increasingly prevalent in the outpatient setting and can provide significant challenges for patients and their treating clinicians.6 In addition to multidrug-resistant infections frequently associated with class-based resistance, we need to address challenges of general intrinsic resistance mechanisms such as permeability and efflux, which affect not only existing classes of drugs but also new drug classes.7

We believe that delivering scientific innovation that improves on existing anti-infectives will equip physicians with tools that could help enhance patient outcomes.

Company
Qpex employee working in the lab.
Qpex employee working in the lab.
Qpex employee working in the lab.
Qpex employee working in the lab.

Next-Generation Scientists

Qpex employees play a leading role in developing solutions to the challenges of anti-infective resistance. As your expertise grows, you may help mentor the next generation of drug discovery and clinical scientists who will develop new active anti-infectives that will improve the quality of care for patients.

Careers

References

  1. Bartlett A, Padfield D, Lear L, Bendall R, Vos M (2022). A comprehensive list of bacterial pathogens infecting humans. Microbiology, 168(12). ↩︎
  2. About Fungal Diseases. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accessed May 24, 2024. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/fungal/about/index.html#:~:text=There%20are%20nearly%201%2D5,risk%20for%20most%20fungal%20infections. ↩︎
  3. Dheman N, Mahoney N, Cox EC, Farley JJ, Amini T, Lanthier ML. An Analysis of Antibacterial Drug Development Trends in the United States, 1980–2019, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2021 Dec; 73(11):e4444-e4450. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa859. ↩︎
  4. Antibiotics Resistance Threats in the United States 2019. Accessed December 4, 2024. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/antimicrobial-resistance/media/pdfs/2019-ar-threats-report-508.pdf. ↩︎
  5. Antibiotic Use and Antimicrobial Resistance Facts. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Accessed December 6, 2024. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/antibiotic-use/data-research/facts-stats/index.html. ↩︎
  6. van Duin D, et al. Multidrug-Resistant Bacteria in the Community: Trends and Lessons Learned. Infect Dis Clin North Am. 2016 Jun;30(2):377-390. doi:10.1016/j.idc.2016.02.004. ↩︎
  7. Boyd NK, et al. Brief Overview of Approaches and Challenges in New Antibiotic Development: A Focus On Drug Repurposing. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. 2021 May 17;11:684515. doi:10.3389/fcimb.2021.684515. ↩︎
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