The creation of the list was a collaborative effort led by Prof. Evelina Tacconelli and her colleagues in the infectious diseases division at the University of Tübingen. They utilized decision-analytic techniques and many criteria including: ”how deadly the infections they cause are; whether their treatment requires long hospital stays; how frequently they are resistant to existing antibiotics when people in communities catch them; how easily they spread between animals, from animals to humans, and from person to person; whether they can be prevented (e.g. through good hygiene and vaccination); how many treatment options remain; and whether new antibiotics to treat them are already in the R&D pipeline.”
Nature has a nice discussion of this effort and places it into context with other existing initiatives. The “money” quote comes from Michael Gilmore: “The bottom line is that the economic model (for antibiotic development) doesn't work.”
