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VIDEO: Imipenem-relebactam noninferior to impipenem alone in cUTIs
BOSTON — Amanda Paschke, MD, MSCE, director of infectious disease clinical research at Merck, discusses phase 2 data presented at ASM Microbe 2016 demonstrating the safety and efficacy of relebactam in combination with imipenem/cilastatin in patients with complicated urinary tract infections. She says that relebactam is a novel beta-lactamase inhibitor that covers class A and C beta-lactamases, including Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase-producing organisms and AmpC-producing Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
“The reason we need new drugs like imipenem-relebactam is because of the global epidemic of multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria and the continuing emergence of new threats of new mechanisms of resistance,” she says. “Patients who have these infections are often complicated patients with multiple underlying medical conditions. In settings such as sepsis or septic shock, we only have days — or less than that — to treat them adequately and to select the right drug that will treat the pathogen they have. Imipenem-relebactam represents a new drug that can address these infections.”
Disclosure: Paschke is an employee of Merck.