A new kind of oral antibiotic to treat gonorrhea has secured Food and Drug Administration approval, the second time in two days that a new drug for the common sexually transmitted infection has come through licensure.

Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhea, has for decades been evolving to evade the antibiotics used to treat it. The current standard of care — an intramuscular injection of ceftriaxone — is the last antibiotic to reliably treat the infection, and increasingly treatment failures are being reported.

Zoliflodacin, which will be marketed under the name Nuzolvence, is the first new drug to uniquely target gonorrhea infections in decades, and the first developed as part of a public-private partnership.

It was brought through the final stage of development by

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