Promising New Antibiotic Emerges for Treating UTIs

November 4, 2022 – A new antibiotic for urinary tract infections is nearing federal approval.
It's the first new treatment for urinary tract infections in 20 years, and more than half of women will be affected at least at some point in their lives, according to data compiled by the Department of Health and Human Services.
The trial, called gepotidacin, has prematurely stopped containing the antibiotic due to excellent efficacy and safety results so far, pharmaceutical company GSK said in a press release on Thursday. We will seek approval and peer-reviewed releases first. New antibiotics like this are needed because antibiotic resistance is on the rise. Antibiotic resistance to bacteria is so widespread that the World Health Organization recently began publishing a list of bacteria that pose the greatest threat to public health.
Cindy Liu, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., Center for Antibiotic Resistance Action at George Washington University, told CNN:
But antibiotics aren't a particularly profitable class of drugs, he reports The Wall Street Journal. The paper noted that it should be used sparingly to limit drag, usually mandating the cheapest option. Several small companies that manufacture antibiotics have even gone bankrupt recently, the journal noted.
The US government is investing in the development of GSK's Gepotidacin. The company predicts the drug will become a ''blockbuster'' and could generate more than $1 billion in revenue due to UTI resistance to other drugs, the journal reported.
“I think it will be very interesting and important for the field to see how pharmaceutical companies are marketing this product and how they are doing,” he said.