NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

See the following -

Federal Prize Competition Seeks Innovative Ideas to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance

Press Release | National Institutes of Health | September 8, 2016

A federal prize competition launched today is calling for innovative ideas for rapid, point-of-care laboratory diagnostic tests to combat the development and spread of drug resistant bacteria, a rising public health threat. Antibiotic resistant bacteria cause at least 2 million infections and 23,000 deaths each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostic Challenge will award $20 million in prizes over all phases of the competition for new, innovative and novel laboratory diagnostic tests...

Read More »

Scientists Scour the Globe for a Drug to Kill Deadly Brain-Eating Amoeba

Lindzi Wessel | Stat News | July 22, 2016

The deaths hit the headlines every summer, sometimes five or six of them across the country. They’re newsworthy for their rarity and for how innocuous the events leading up to them are — it’s usually a young person who was swimming in a lake, got some water up their nose, and within days, was dead. The cause is an amoeba called Naegleria fowleri, which when it infects the brain, causes massive swelling that is almost always fatal. Over the past half-decade, 137 people in the US have died of the infection...

Read More »