European Antibiotic Awareness Day Highlights Need for Urgent Action
17 November 2014 - 5:00PM
Business Wire
Cubist Joining the Fight Against Antibiotic
Resistance in the United Kingdom
Tuesday, November 18th marks European Antibiotic Awareness Day.
Public health experts, hospitals, and physicians in the United
Kingdom are uniting to raise awareness of what can be done to fight
what the World Health Organization (WHO) calls one of the top three
threats to human health. The issue of rising antibiotic resistance
and the lack of treatment options is causing increasing concern
worldwide, including in the UK.
To address the urgent need for new antibiotics, Cubist
Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: CBST), the global leader in the
discovery, development, and commercialization of novel antibiotics,
is investing significantly in global antibiotic R&D and is
focusing its late-stage pipeline on addressing serious and
potentially life-threatening healthcare-acquired bacterial
infections. To fight the global battle against antibiotic
resistance and to support the potential launch of two new
antibiotics in Europe in 2015, Cubist is expanding its presence in
Europe and has recently begun operations in the UK.
“This year’s awareness day comes at a critical juncture,” said
Sebastian Stachowiak, Country Manager, United Kingdom, Ireland and
Nordics, Cubist Pharmaceuticals. “With resistant bacterial
infections resulting in an estimated 25,000 deaths in the European
Union, solutions are needed today to address growing resistance in
the United Kingdom and throughout Europe.”
Twenty percent of all deaths due to antibiotic resistance
infections in Europe occur in the United Kingdom.
The World Health Organization (WHO) issued its first ever report
on antibiotic resistance earlier this year and their
characterization of the problem was stark. Less than a century
after widely available antibiotics ushered in an era of increasing
life expectancy thanks to the ability to fight infection, mankind
is now at risk of entering a “post antibiotic era” where doctors no
longer have medications to treat serious infections.
As a company at the forefront of antibiotic development, Cubist
is a founding member of a recently announced public-private
consortium called DRIVE-AB (Driving Reinvestment in R&D and
Responsible Antibiotic Use). DRIVE-AB is a €9.4 million
public-private consortium, funded by the EU Innovative Medicines
Initiative (IMI), with the goal of improving standards for
responsible antibiotic use and development of new models for
research and development of new treatments. Visit
http://drive-ab.eu/about/ to learn more.
About Cubist’s Commitment to Antibiotic R&D
For more than 20 years, Cubist has had an unwavering focus on
antibiotics. The Company is committed to global public health
through the discovery, development, and supply of antibiotics to
treat serious and potentially life-threatening infections caused by
a broad range of increasingly drug-resistant bacteria. With one of
the strongest antibiotics pipelines in the industry, Cubist expects
to invest approximately $400M USD in 2014 on antibacterial R&D
and hopes to deliver at least four new antibiotics in support of
the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) goal of 10 new
antibiotics by 2020. To learn more about superbugs, the threat of
resistance, and the global response visit:
http://www.cubist.com/superbugs.
About Cubist
Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a global biopharmaceutical
company focused on the research, development, and commercialization
of pharmaceutical products that address significant unmet medical
needs in the acute care environment. Cubist’s corporate
headquarters is based in Lexington, Massachusetts, with
international headquarters located in Zurich, Switzerland.
Additional information can be found at Cubist’s web site at
www.cubist.com. Also, connect with Cubist on Twitter
@cubistbiopharma and @cubistcareers, LinkedIn, or YouTube.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements. Any
statements contained herein which do not describe historical facts,
including but not limited to, statements regarding: our plans to
expand in Europe; our commitment to global public health and
ability to address the global battle against resistant bacteria;
the level of our financial investment in antibiotic research and
development; the expected timing for our potential launch of two
new antibiotics in Europe; the strength of our antibiotic pipeline;
and our aspirations to achieve a portion of the IDSA goal of 10 new
antibiotics by 2020, are forward-looking statements which involve
risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ
materially from those discussed in such forward-looking statements.
Such risks and uncertainties include, among others: risks related
to drug development and commercialization; our ability to achieve
our strategic goals, including as a result of our ability to
continue to grow revenues from the sale of our products, generic
and other competition, manufacturing issues, our ability to
successfully develop, gain marketing approval for and commercially
launch our product candidates for their planned indications and on
their expected timelines, and our ability to discover, in-license
or acquire new products and product candidates; regulatory
developments in Europe and other countries, including the risk that
the European Commission may not approve our marketing authorization
applications; the strength of, and our ability to successfully
obtain, maintain and enforce intellectual property protecting our
products and product candidates; and those additional factors
discussed in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and
subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities
and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov. We caution
investors not to place considerable reliance on the forward-looking
statements contained in this press release. These forward-looking
statements speak only as of the date of this document, and we
undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these
statements.
Weber ShandwickRob Skelding, +44 (0)7917
642273Rskelding@webershandwick.com