Calla Lily Clinical Care, a women’s health-focused medical technology company, has joined Wellcome Leap’s Focused Antibiotics programme – a new $50m funded programme to transform how antibiotics are delivered and address the growing global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Founded by the Wellcome Trust in 2020, US non-profit Wellcome Leap runs research programmes such as Focused Antibiotics, which aims to develop targeted treatments that tackle infections while preserving the gut microbiome.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is projected to contribute to more than 8 million deaths annually by 2050¹, with systemic antibiotic use contributing to gut damage and the spread of resistant bacteria. Women are disproportionately affected, receiving almost 40% more antibiotics than men between the ages of 16 and 54, largely due to the prevalence of urinary tract infections².

Calla Lily Clinical Care has been selected by Wellcome Leap to deliver antibiotics directly via the vaginal wall, bypassing GI transit and first-pass metabolism, and expected to confine systemic exposure to under 5%. Currently, no first-line UTI antibiotic is available in a mass-manufactured vaginal formulation and, if successful, this project will support the programme’s broader objectives of reducing antibiotic-driven resistant infections by up to 40% per year.

Callavid has developed a leak-free, tampon-like platform for delivering vaginal medicines and hormones. Its NIHR-funded FREEDOM trial, launched in April 2026, is evaluating vaginal progesterone delivery, with the study having passed its safety stopping rule and 90% of patients completing the first dosing round.

Dr Lara Zibners, Co-founder and Chair of Calla Lily Clinical Care, added: “Women are disproportionately impacted by urinary tract infections, yet the consequences of that repeated systemic exposure have been largely overlooked. Organisations such as Wellcome Leap play a vital role in tackling major healthcare challenges through bold innovation.”

Thang Vo-Ta, Co-founder and CEO of Calla Lily Clinical Care, said: “The Focused Antibiotics programme gives us the ideal partner to pursue one of the most consequential of those indications: treating the world’s most common bacterial infection in women while helping to address a global resistance crisis that, left unchecked, could claim eight million lives annually by 2050. This marks a pivotal moment in demonstrating that when you solve for women, you solve for everyone.”

The project will be led by Dr Serena de Gelidi, Principal Investigator and R&D Manager at Calla Lily Clinical Care, who holds a PhD in Biomechanical Engineering and brings over thirteen years of medical device research experience, including work on the EU Horizon 2020-funded CRADL device for premature infants. She is supported by Professor Andrew Lewis, Principal Scientist at Calla Lily and an international authority on drug-eluting systems with 58 patents and over 260 peer-reviewed publications.