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# NIH Funds Antibiotic Alternative Development
- URL: https://www.fdaweb.com/nih-funds-antibiotic-alternative-development/
- Published: 2016-01-14T12:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-15T02:27:41.000Z
- Author: David McFarland
- Tags: Drugs, #legacy-id-D5134433

> The National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease is providing some $5 million in funding for 24 research projects at 18 academic institutions and three industry organizations seeking to develop non-traditional therapeutics for bacterial infections to help address the growing health threat of antibiotic resistance. An [announcement](http://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/new-nih-awards-will-support-development-therapeutic-alternatives-traditional-antibiotics?ref=fdaweb.com) of the grants says that increasing resistance to antibiotics coupled with the slow pace of new antibiotic development threatens to erode the past 70 years of progress in fighting life-threatening bacterial infections. “The overuse and abuse of antibiotics drives this issue and, as a consequence, bacteria adapt to antibiotics designed to destroy them, making the drugs less effective and allowing antibiotic-resistant strains to survive and multiply,” it says.  
>  
> A non-traditional therapeutic is an antibacterial treatment that works differently than traditional antibiotics. The institute says that one non-traditional approach, therapeutic bacteria, uses good bacteria found in or added to the human microbiome to target or control the growth of harmful bacteria. Another alternative approach is bacteriophage or phage therapy, using viruses that only affect bacteria to reduce or eliminate those bacteria in humans.  
>  
> The initial awards provide two years of funding with the possibility of three additional years of funding for the most promising projects.