excellent article ("New Antibiotics-Government Intervention Versus Market Forces, Microbe, February 2007, p. 56) underscores the urgent need to develop new anti-infective therapeutics. He emphasizes the importance of government incentives for pharmaceutical discovery and advanced development, and notes that until the creation of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority within the Department of Health and Human Services in December 2006, "none of the (federal) agencies (had)

more »

... specific competence or desire to become or to establish all those coordinated activities that are embodied within pharmaceutical companies (from basic science through manufacturing and marketing)." The need to coordinate pharmaceutical development through FDA licensure is addressed in the Department of Defense Chemical and Biological Defense Program (CBDP). Within the CBDP, the Department of Defense (DOD) has launched the Transformational Medical Technologies Initiative (TMTI) as an innovative $1.5 billion biodefense program to develop broadspectrum medical countermeasures, including antimicrobial agents, against biological weapons threats including intracellular bacterial pathogens, hemorrhagic fever viruses, and novel or genetically engineered