Antibiotics are the bedrock of modern medicine. Every year, 1 in 3 people worldwide rely on an antibiotic to treat or prevent bacterial infections. This foundation is under global threat as bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics. Today, 1 in 6 infections are resistant to standard first-line treatments. In 2021 alone, resistant infections were linked to 1.14 million deaths – more than HIV/AIDS or malaria. If left unaddressed, resistant bacterial infections are projected to kill more than 8 million people annually by 2050.
Approximately 85-90% of human infections are local (contained in the bladder, middle ear, skin, or respiratory tract), however nearly 100% of antibiotics are administered systemically – either through oral tablets or intravenous injections. This mismatch exposes the entire body to antibiotics, turning the gut into a “resistance factory.”
What if we could deliver Focused Antibiotics – targeting the bacteria causing the infection and sparing the rest? That’s the goal of Wellcome Leap’s new $50M program – to demonstrate a new possibility: reformulated antibiotics that spare the gut microbiome without loss of treatment efficacy. If successful, scaling these formulations as first-line therapeutics for the most common outpatient bacterial infections, could reduce the global annual occurrence of antibiotic-driven resistant infections by as much as 40% – potentially avoiding over 100 million resistant infections even within a decade of real-world use.
Abstract application steps.
Upload your abstract and submit your application before 15 May 2026 at 11:59pm ET.
Focused Antibiotics
Antibiotics are the bedrock of modern medicine. Every year, 1 in 3 people worldwide rely on an antibiotic to treat or prevent bacterial infections. This foundation is under global threat as bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics. Today, 1 in 6 infections are resistant to standard first-line treatments. In 2021 alone, resistant infections were linked to 1.14 million deaths – more than HIV/AIDS or malaria. If left unaddressed, resistant bacterial infections are projected to kill more than 8 million people annually by 2050.
Approximately 85-90% of human infections are local (contained in the bladder, middle ear, skin, or respiratory tract), however nearly 100% of antibiotics are administered systemically – either through oral tablets or intravenous injections. This mismatch exposes the entire body to antibiotics, turning the gut into a “resistance factory.”
What if we could deliver Focused Antibiotics – targeting the bacteria causing the infection and sparing the rest? That’s the goal of Wellcome Leap’s new $50M program – to demonstrate a new possibility: reformulated antibiotics that spare the gut microbiome without loss of treatment efficacy. If successful, scaling these formulations as first-line therapeutics for the most common outpatient bacterial infections, could reduce the global annual occurrence of antibiotic-driven resistant infections by as much as 40% – potentially avoiding over 100 million resistant infections even within a decade of real-world use.
Abstract application steps.
Upload your abstract and submit your application before 15 May 2026 at 11:59pm ET.