European Antibiotic Awareness Day Highlights Need For Urgent Action

Cubist Joining the Fight Against Antibiotic Resistance in the United Kingdom

LONDON--November 17, 2014--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Tuesday, November 18th marks European Antibiotic Awareness Day. Public health experts, hospitals, and physicians in the United Kingdom are uniting to raise awareness of what can be done to fight what the World Health Organization (WHO) calls one of the top three threats to human health. The issue of rising antibiotic resistance and the lack of treatment options is causing increasing concern worldwide, including in the UK.

To address the urgent need for new antibiotics, Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: CBST), the global leader in the discovery, development, and commercialization of novel antibiotics, is investing significantly in global antibiotic R&D and is focusing its late-stage pipeline on addressing serious and potentially life-threatening healthcare-acquired bacterial infections. To fight the global battle against antibiotic resistance and to support the potential launch of two new antibiotics in Europe in 2015, Cubist is expanding its presence in Europe and has recently begun operations in the UK.

“This year’s awareness day comes at a critical juncture,” said Sebastian Stachowiak, Country Manager, United Kingdom, Ireland and Nordics, Cubist Pharmaceuticals. “With resistant bacterial infections resulting in an estimated 25,000 deaths in the European Union, solutions are needed today to address growing resistance in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe.”

Twenty percent of all deaths due to antibiotic resistance infections in Europe occur in the United Kingdom.

The World Health Organization (WHO) issued its first ever report on antibiotic resistance earlier this year and their characterization of the problem was stark. Less than a century after widely available antibiotics ushered in an era of increasing life expectancy thanks to the ability to fight infection, mankind is now at risk of entering a “post antibiotic era” where doctors no longer have medications to treat serious infections.

As a company at the forefront of antibiotic development, Cubist is a founding member of a recently announced public-private consortium called DRIVE-AB (Driving Reinvestment in R&D and Responsible Antibiotic Use). DRIVE-AB is a €9.4 million public-private consortium, funded by the EU Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), with the goal of improving standards for responsible antibiotic use and development of new models for research and development of new treatments. Visit http://drive-ab.eu/about/ to learn more.

About Cubist’s Commitment to Antibiotic R&D

For more than 20 years, Cubist has had an unwavering focus on antibiotics. The Company is committed to global public health through the discovery, development, and supply of antibiotics to treat serious and potentially life-threatening infections caused by a broad range of increasingly drug-resistant bacteria. With one of the strongest antibiotics pipelines in the industry, Cubist expects to invest approximately $400M USD in 2014 on antibacterial R&D and hopes to deliver at least four new antibiotics in support of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) goal of 10 new antibiotics by 2020. To learn more about superbugs, the threat of resistance, and the global response visit: http://www.cubist.com/superbugs.

About Cubist

Cubist Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on the research, development, and commercialization of pharmaceutical products that address significant unmet medical needs in the acute care environment. Cubist’s corporate headquarters is based in Lexington, Massachusetts, with international headquarters located in Zurich, Switzerland. Additional information can be found at Cubist’s web site at www.cubist.com. Also, connect with Cubist on Twitter @cubistbiopharma and @cubistcareers, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements. Any statements contained herein which do not describe historical facts, including but not limited to, statements regarding: our plans to expand in Europe; our commitment to global public health and ability to address the global battle against resistant bacteria; the level of our financial investment in antibiotic research and development; the expected timing for our potential launch of two new antibiotics in Europe; the strength of our antibiotic pipeline; and our aspirations to achieve a portion of the IDSA goal of 10 new antibiotics by 2020, are forward-looking statements which involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in such forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, among others: risks related to drug development and commercialization; our ability to achieve our strategic goals, including as a result of our ability to continue to grow revenues from the sale of our products, generic and other competition, manufacturing issues, our ability to successfully develop, gain marketing approval for and commercially launch our product candidates for their planned indications and on their expected timelines, and our ability to discover, in-license or acquire new products and product candidates; regulatory developments in Europe and other countries, including the risk that the European Commission may not approve our marketing authorization applications; the strength of, and our ability to successfully obtain, maintain and enforce intellectual property protecting our products and product candidates; and those additional factors discussed in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available at www.sec.gov. We caution investors not to place considerable reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this document, and we undertake no obligation to update or revise any of these statements.

Contacts
Weber Shandwick
Rob Skelding, +44 (0)7917 642273
[email protected]