The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in December rejected the new antibiotic solithromycin over liver toxicity fears, putting the future of the drug in doubt and sending a chill through companies working on novel antimicrobials. “The problems with solithromycin are going to hit the whole sector hard,” says Lloyd Czaplewski, director of Chemical Biology Ventures, a pharmaceutical R&D consultancy in Oxford, UK. “It could put people off getting into an area where we really need some successes.” Read more in Nature Biotechnology.