ENABLE-2 ready to take the next step to combat resistant bacteria • "Concerted efforts are needed"

With the golden age of antibiotic discovery long gone, resistant bacteria are a rapidly accelerating threat to global health. According to the World Health Organization, drug-resistant bacteria directly caused almost 1.3 million deaths in 2019, and the Swedish government recently sent an important signal to its European neighbours when allocating SEK 100 million over the next four years to ENABLE-2, the international antibiotic discovery platform led by Uppsala University.

“Despite the urgent need for new antibiotics, no new antibiotic class has reached the market in close to forty years. One challenge is insufficient resources. The fact that we have now secured funding through 2028 provides stability, and our programme owners value that ENABLE-2 is a stable partner through the early development stages of antibiotics,” says Anders Karlén, Professor at Uppsala University and Coordinator of ENABLE-2.

After initially providing support to only Swedish research groups, ENABLE-2 opened up for applications from all of Europe in 2023. The response was immediate and today the platform receives a continuous flow of applications from across the continent. So far, almost thirty candidates have been reviewed by an independent expert committee, and ten of these have been assessed as sufficiently promising for a position in the ENABLE-2 portfolio.

“We established ENABLE-2 with the experience that we built in 2014–2021 when we coordinated the European antibiotic drug discovery and development platform ENABLE, and this allowed us to quickly set up a well-functioning machinery with the expertise and technology required. We are seeing a great interest which confirms that our platform fulfils a much-needed function taking new molecules from the lab towards an approved drug,” says Marie Olliver, Alliance Manager in ENABLE-2.

Success in combating resistant bacteria requires concerted efforts, and in the autumn of 2024, the United Nations adopted a political declaration with almost 50 undertakings towards combating antimicrobial resistance. These include reducing the number of antibiotic-associated deaths in the world by ten percent by 2030, a goal that further drives the need for new drugs and makes the ENABLE-2 team look beyond the borders of Europe.

“Our current set-up allows us to accept applications from publicly funded universities and research institutes in Europe. Today, ENABLE-2 collaborates with high-quality programmes at universities in Oxford, Leiden, Berlin, Giessen and Belfast, but since developing new antibiotics is a long and difficult process, with a high failure rate of candidate drugs, we need a large pool of candidates. We are convinced that there are numerous research groups/organisations, both within and beyond Europe, developing potential new antibiotic molecules that can become effective drugs,” says Marie Olliver.

Expanding the offer to also include biotech industry requires the intake of external funding, and after positive talks with several potential partners, ENABLE-2 is currently pursuing what Anders Karlén describes as a promising track. In parallel, he emphasizes that the platform is consistently keeping all doors open:

“ENABLE-2 has the important task to guide the best antibiotic candidates along the early phases of development, but also to help educate and inspire a new generation of experts. This entails great responsibilities and we need every force willing to contribute – and with the strong commitment that surrounds antimicrobial resistance, I am convinced that our platform will be ready to present our next step in the near future.”

text: Magnus Alsne, photo: Mikael Wallerstedt a o