Anand Anandkumar’s father was a physician who spent his career fighting infectious diseases in the South Indian city of Chennai. It was an infection that killed him.
In and out of hospital for a failing heart, he picked up a bug resistant to most antibiotics and died of complications from sepsis.
His story is common in India, where so-called superbugs kill nearly 60,000 newborns every year. The rapid spread of resistant bacteria has made India the epicenter of a war to prevent a post-antibiotic world, where people would once again die in the thousands of commonplace infections.
“We’re on the front line,” said Anandkumar, who a year after his father’s death co-founded Bengaluru-based startup Bugworks Research India, to develop new antibiotics. “We’re creating a bullet against organisms that are taking out humanity. Wouldn’t it be nice to get a battleground to test it on that’s really tough?”
The theater of war is all around him. India has few weapons to fight infection after years of poorly controlled antibiotic use in humans and animals, combined with effluent from the local drug industry that turned lakes and streams into breeding grounds for resistance. A study of one hospital in South India found half the patients acquired at least one infection during their stay, with about 74 percent of those infections showing resistance to multiple drugs.
The Indian government has begun to provide early research funding, advice and support to startups like Bugworks. It also funds the startup incubator that Bugworks shares with 21 other biotech firms.
Last year, Bugworks became the first company in Asia to receive investment from CARB-X, the U.S. government’s main funding vehicle for the fight against superbugs.
PHAGElogist 