⚠️ Nature-inspired antibiotics have been the foundation of modern medicine for over a century, but their effectiveness is under threat from drug resistance.

❓How many nature-inspired antibiotics have been approved for human use? What are their structures? Who developed and launched them, in what countries, when and for what infectious diseases? How do they work and are they still being used today?

⏳In a review publish today in Natural Product Reports, co-authored with Rob Capon, we answer all these questions and more, providing details and charting trends from the first approval of penicillin G in 1943 to 2025, backed up by over 1,000 literature citations.

👀 Some eye-opening facts:

• 217 natural product-inspired antibiotics have been used to treat human bacterial infections since 1943.
• Around 151 are still in use with around 24 only in limited use.
• 122 (81%) belong to just 5 classes: beta-lactams (71, 46%), macrolides (15, 9.9%), aminoglycosides (14, 9.3%), tetracyclines (12, 7.9%) and peptides (10, 6.6%).
• Only 3 new natural product drug classes have been approved since 2000 (daptomycin, pleuromutilin and fidaxomicin)

⏰The clock is ticking…. to learn more, follow the link.

#Antibiotics #DrugDiscovery #NatureInspired #AMR #PharmaResearch #InfectiousDiseases #NaturalProducts #MedicalResearch #GlobalHealth #ScienceCommunication