9 September 2024 

Manica Balasegaram, executive director of the Global Antibiotic Research & Development Partnership (GARDP), has devoted more than two decades to one goal. He wants to help people who are suffering.

Of course, that’s putting it quite simply. Still, the mission is the essence of the GARDP’s focus on ramping up the development and access to treatments for drug-resistant bacterial infections and one that in turn drives Balasegaram’s remarkable work in the public health space.

Last year saw a groundbreaking phase 3 win for what could become the first new antibiotic approved to treat gonorrhea in decades. Zoliflodacin, which was developed by the GARDP and Innovia Specialty Therapeutics, matched up with the current standard-of-care in the largest clinical trial ever conducted for a new gonorrhea treatment.

The milestone was a long time coming and much needed, considering the more than 82 million new infections of the sexually transmitted disease yearly. But, beyond its prevalence, gonorrhea represents a much wider-scale problem called antibiotic resistance, or antimicrobial resistance (AMR