ENABLE-2, a platform for antibacterial drug development

Antibiotics are an essential pillar of modern medicine, and are arguably the most successful class of drugs ever used in human medicine.

However, this public health success story is under serious threat, both in Sweden and globally, because of the rise in antimicrobial resistance.

In response to this threat the World Health Organization (WHO) has issued lists prioritizing pathogens for which there is an urgent need to develop new antibiotics.

The establishment in 2014 of the ENABLE antibiotic discovery project by the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) was a defining moment for Europe to meet this challenge.

ENABLE, a multidisciplinary international project, co-led by Uppsala University, succeeded well beyond its initial objectives but funding ended in July 2021 as scheduled.

To continue to accelerate activity in this field and populate the early-stage antibacterial pipeline with novel compounds we propose that the successful ENABLE project be continued.

Our proposal with ENABLE-2 is to build an antibacterial drug discovery platform based on the learnings from ENABLE and focused on the early stages of discovery and development.

Programs successfully developed within ENABLE-2 will then be channeled into one of the major downstream initiatives such as CARB-X, REPAIR or GARDP to be further developed, or directly out-licensed to a pharmaceutical company.