Bug Wars: Big drug firms have all but given up looking for new antibiotics. Biotechs are filling in.

Are we losing the war against bacterial disease? The past 35 years have seen only one new class of bacteria-fighting drugs come to market, and a solo entrant at that--Pfizer's Zyvox. Medicine needs new antibiotics more than ever. Drug-resistant strains of everything from tuberculosis to staphylococcus are killing tens of thousands of patients every year. Penicillin is now useless against one-third of all Streptococcus pneumoniae, a common cause of pneumonia, meningitis and ear infections. The cost …

…stock price. He noticed that Glaxo had dropped Factive, a drug whose development he had spearheaded. "Their loss was our gain," Patou says. The FDA was concerned over the drug's skin rash side effects. GeneSoft used Glaxo data and doctor testimony to convince the FDA that the skin rash was manageable and worth the risk for a drug that can attack pneumonia. GeneSoft is hoping to land a big pharmaceutical company as a marketing partner.