New data from IDWeek 2025 highlights the effectiveness of cefiderocol in “patients with serious infections caused by gram-negative (GN) bacteria,” and promising data was also revealed for an experimental oral antibiotic for complicated urinary tract infections (cUTIs). CIDRAP has the news.
The U.S. cohort in the cefiderocol study showed that “the overall clinical cure rate across different infection sites was 70.1%, with a cure rate of 73.7% in patients who received cefiderocol empirically and 54.3% when it was used as salvage therapy.” 57.3% of patients were in the ICU, and 47.6% were receiving organ support. Cefiderocol was also shown to be “highly active against bacteria that's not susceptible to newer beta-lactam/beta-lactamase inhibitor combinations.”
A phase 3 trial of tebipenem hydrobromide (HBr), which is “an investigational oral antibiotic for cUTIs,” also yielded positive results. The medication’s overall success rate “was 58.5%, compared with 60.2% for imipenem-cilastatin, for an adjusted treatment difference of –1.3%. The safety profile was similar to that of imipenem-cilastatin and other carbapenems.”
There are about 2.9 million cUTI cases treated every year in the U.S. IV carbapenems “are the current standard of care when the infection is caused by multidrug-resistant pathogens or progresses to sepsis.” Tebipenem HBr would be the “first oral carbapenem in the U.S. for cUTI patients.”
