Drug-resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae, and particularly increasing incidence of ceftriaxone-resistant N gonorrhoeae, are making treatment of gonorrhea more and more challenging, with the risk of becoming untreatable. If left untreated, gonorrhea, a prevalent sexually transmitted disease causes by the gonococcus, can lead to complications including pelvic inflammatory disease, infertility, ectopic pregnancy, and an increased risk for the acquisition and transmission of HIV [1]. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 82 million new cases of gonorrhea occurred globally in 2020 [2].

Recognizing the urgency, WHO listed N. gonorrhoeae as a priority pathogen for research and development of new antibiotics in 2017 [3] and CDC have classified drug-resistant N. gonorrhoeae as “urgent threat” in 2019 [4]. The new antibiotics zoliflodacin and gepotidacin, both in Phase 3, have shown good antibacterial ability against N. gonorrhoeae in vitro [5, 6], but their clinical efficacy still needs to be evaluated. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find new antibiotics to treat gonococcal infections.

To support drug discovery addressing N. gonorrhoeae, we propose a platform approach to cover in vitro and in vivo profiling of new molecules, with the goal to identify new promising drug candidates in an efficient way.