You know, I think it's underappreciated in some countries how desperate this crisis is already.
The bacterium we target is these carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriae.
It's a very rare infection in the UK.
But if you go to Greece, they have in their ICUs a pathogen known as Klebsiella.
Already 90% of Klebsiella in those ICUs are resistant to carbapenems,
and carbapenems are the last line of antibiotic defence.
So these are patients in intensive care units with serious infections with no antibiotic options.
Ten years ago, Greece didn't have CRE.
So it can happen very quickly.
And we're seeing this global spread.
So there is a need to act early in advance of the crisis really being an enormous medical and,
of course, national problem.
That is, I'm afraid, not news.
It 's from an interview 11 years ago,
since when the medical crisis due to carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella has only grown worse.
In 2017, the World Health Organization put the bugs into the top critical category
of priority pathogens needing new antibiotics.
My interview with Kenneth Hillen two years earlier was relevant.
He was the CEO of a company that was in the final stages of testing the kind of new antibiotic the world needed.
His company, Achaogen, was a small start-up, hoping to fill a space vacated by the big drugs multinationals.