Treating Infectious Diseases in a Microbial World: Report of Two Workshops on Novel Antimicrobial Therapeutics

Excerpt

At the request of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, two committees established by the National Research Council organized workshops to identify promising new approaches to the development of antimicrobial therapeutics (Appendix A). One workshop focused on potential new classes of antibiotics, while the other explored the possibility of treating infectious diseases by modulating the immune system. The need for new antimicrobial therapeutics is acute because of growing resistance to available antibiotics, the emergence of new infectious diseases like SARS and West Nile virus, and the risk of bioterrorist attacks using infectious agents that may not be immediately identifiable. From one point of view, these are all manifestations of a single problem—human vulnerability to microbial disease—and therefore subject to one solution—a single drug that can protect against any infectious agent. Attractive as the idea of a "gorillacillin" superdrug might be in the abstract, discussions at both workshops made it clear that a point of view pitting human against microorganism is at best limited and at worst seriously flawed.