How Managing Data Effectively Helps Fight Antimicrobial Resistance

The crisis of antibiotic resistance is making the discovery and development of new antibiotics crucial, and companies are teaming up to tackle the growing challenge. But managing collaborative drug discovery data is tough, requiring many small biotechs to rethink how they share and manage their data for antimicrobial development.

Antimicrobial resistance is on the rise. Worldwide, approximately 700,000 people die from drug-resistant infections each year. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), if nothing is done to prevent it, this number could increase to 10 million deaths by 2050. So why has the situation escalated this much?

The problem, explained Andrej Trauner, Project Manager in Discovery Research at Swiss biotech BioVersys, is that we have taken antimicrobial drugs for granted for too long. “Antimicrobials are a cornerstone of modern medicine. But just as we take for granted that there will be electricity in our house, we also take for granted that there will be effective antimicrobials when we need them.”