AMR Action Fund head aims to boost innovation, funds for new antibiotics

CIDRAP News spoke with AMR Action Fund CEO Henry Skinner, PhD, about the current state of antibiotic development, the need to fix the broken market for new antibiotics, and how to build a sustainable pipeline.

Many large pharmaceutical companies have abandoned antibiotic research and development (R&D) because of the poor return on investment. Smaller companies have gone bankrupt after getting a new antibiotic approved, for the very same reason. Multiple analyses have found that the pipeline to replace some of the antibiotics we’ve relied on for decades has some very good candidates for deadly, multidrug-resistant pathogens, but not enough. And too few of them are truly innovative.