Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to share with you GARDP’s 2017 Activity Report, which reflects our contribution to developing and delivering new and improved antibiotic treatments that address global public health need while endeavouring to ensure their sustainable access.

Highlights during our first full year in operation include prioritising our R&D efforts to develop antibiotics for neonatal sepsis and drug-resistant gonorrhoea – two disease areas of global priority. We have also reviewed assets from several pharmaceutical companies and research entities as part of our transversal R&D efforts to recover knowledge, data, and assets of forgotten or abandoned antibiotics, as well as identify new treatments for our priority area. This has been possible through building a highly skilled and dedicated team from a range of sectors and backgrounds

GARDP has without a doubt benefited greatly from our unique World Health Organization (WHO) and Drugs for Neglected Disease initiative’s (DNDi) parentage. Our incubation period, hosted by DNDi has allowed us to capitalize on DNDi’s R&D expertise and infrastructure, while WHO’s technical expertise areas has helped guide our priority setting.

Our efforts have also been significantly boosted by the G20 Health Ministers, who through the Berlin Declaration have not only welcomed but also sought to build on initiatives, such as ours, to ‘reinvigorate research and development in science and industry for antimicrobials.’

Of course, none of this would be possible without the generous support from our donors, to whom I am grateful. I also thank my team and our partners for the contribution each one of you has made to making the year such a success.

Best regards,

Dr Manica Balasegaram
Director, GARDP