Inside CARB-X, the Boston Fund on the Front Lines Fighting Antibiotic Resistance
Rowan Walrath, Bostinno
On a recent Tuesday morning in Boston, I took the Green Line to the office of Kevin Outterson. Small and academic, with a view across the Charles River into Cambridge, the space is unassuming. Yet, it is technically the headquarters of the largest public-private partnership dedicated to fighting antibiotic resistance in the world.
Outterson is the executive director of the Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator, more explicitly known as CARB-X. Run out of Boston University, CARB-X is a fund that provides grants, usually a couple million dollars at a time, and support to companies working on marketable, but scientifically sound, measures to replace the antibiotics that are beginning to lose their battle against ever-evolving bacteria after decades of dominance.
“Antibiotics make up the most important drug class in human history,” Outterson said. “And it self-destructs through bacterial evolution. Globally, we’re still interacting with bacterial evolution in a harmful way through use, overuse, and inappropriate use. We’re messing with something dangerous here: pathogenic bacterial evolution. The only way we can avoid falling back into a pre-antibiotic era is to continue to innovate.”
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