| | | Overview | | | | NovaDigm is determined to address the multiple issues posed by hospital-acquired infections and antimicrobial resistance. Infectious disease remains the second leading cause of death in the world and the third leading cause of death in the United States. In fact, there are approximately two million hospital-acquired infections in the United States every year, resulting in 90,000 deaths.1 The problem is not isolated to hospitals or to sick patients, however; millions of otherwise healthy people in the U.S. are at-risk for invasive Staphylococcus aureus and Candida infections, and would be eligible for vaccination. | | | | Infectious diseases are and will always remain a moving target. Evolution has equipped bacteria, viruses and fungi with the incredible ability to re-arrange their genetics and mutate to become resistant to the therapies that we have discovered to eliminate them. Nearly all available drugs put evolutionary pressure on microbes to become resistant. Antibiotics, antivirals and antifungals selectively kill those organisms that are not resistant, and leave those that are resistant alone to multiply. Eventually, the drugs lose effectiveness as more and more of the surviving resistant microbes reproduce, further increasing the number of resistant strains. | | | | NovaDigm is studying the bacteria and fungi responsible for several infectious diseases and identifying novel strategies to fight them. By teaching the immune system how to fight these microbes with novel vaccines, and developing new strategies for antibiotic and antifungal therapies that are not as susceptible to resistance, we can begin to potentially combat the large and growing problem of drug-resistant infections. | | | | 1. WHO World Health Report 2004, CDC/IDSA “Bad Bugs, No Drugs”, GAO report | | | | | | | |
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