Wanted: A New Approach to Funding Treatments for Drug-Defying Germs

Drug-resistant bacteria are major killers, playing a role in killing five million people a year. Antibiotics were miracle drugs when they were invented 100 years ago, but they are losing their power against always adapting and evolving bacteria. 

At the same time, the market for new antimicrobial drugs has collapsed. Hardly anyone wants to make new antibiotics, and even fewer companies want to make new diagnostic tests or vaccines for drug-resistant infections. 

While the profit motive works well for most diseases – cancer therapies rake in about $200 billion a year – the market for antibiotics was just $8 billion in 2021. 

“We have to accept that there is no money in antibiotics,” says Dr. Ursula Theuretzbacher, who founded the Center of Anti-Infective Agents in Vienna, Austria. 

Only 12 new antibiotics have been launched since 2017, almost all of them variations of existing drugs. 

“What we really need are completely new approaches,” Theuretzbacher says in this episode of One World, One Health. 

She helped write one of a series of papers in the Lancet medical journal looking at the problem, and aiming to set the tone for a high-level United Nations' meeting on antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in 2024. 

“The increasing number of bacterial infections that are no longer responding to any available antibiotics indicate an urgent need to invest in—and ensure global access to—new antibiotics, vaccines, and diagnostic tests,” Theuretzbacher and her team write. 

Listen as Theuretzbacher tells One World, One Health about some new approaches that may work to bring badly needed new drugs, vaccines, and diagnostic tests to the world. 

Check out our other podcasts about the problem of antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, and the Lancet series, including this one with Dr. Iruka Okeke and this one with Aislinn Cook.