Foundations team up to put $60m behind new antibiotics push

The Gates Foundation, Novo Nordisk Foundation, and Wellcome have said they will award $60 million in new grant funding over the next three years to support early-stage research aimed at speeding antibiotic discovery, as antimicrobial resistance keeps eroding the usefulness of existing drugs.

The program, called the Gram-Negative Antibiotic Discovery Innovator (Gr-ADI), will back 18 projects led across 17 countries. The funders billed it as a consortium model in which teams and funders share data and lessons openly to accelerate work on urgently needed antibiotics for Gram-negative bacteria.

The move is the first investment from a $300 million global health research and development partnership the three philanthropies launched in 2024. Wellcome’s infectious disease director Alexander Pym said: “We urgently need bold innovation and new tools to transform the way we discover antibiotics.”