Urgent call for long-term investment in antibiotic research

Antibiotic resistance is a global public health threat. Modern health systems rely on antibiotics to prevent and treat infections, and the need for new drugs is urgent. In a joint call to action, the AMR Accelerator projects ask for long-term investments, emphasizing the need to preserve the European capacity for antibiotic R&D by sustaining the assets, expertise, and research infrastructures required to develop new treatments for drug-resistant infections.

The need for new antibiotics is well-recognized and on 26 September, the United Nations General Assembly will accelerate political actions in a high-level meeting on antimicrobial resistance, or ‘AMR’. The AMR Accelerator – a public-private partnership involving nine European projects and 98 organizations – urges government leaders and private actors to invest in the development of antibiotics and research on antimicrobial resistance.

The call to action, published in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, emphasizes the need for coordinated action and commitments to meet the threat of antimicrobial resistance and secure a sustainable future for European antibiotic development. The return on investment is low, and many large pharmaceutical companies have abandoned the field. According to the authors, collaboration and risk-sharing can help keep companies in anti-infective drug development.

“Without a long-term funding strategy for antibiotics research and development, there is a significant risk that the AMR Accelerator’s efforts to progress the antibacterial pipeline are lost,” says Anders Karlén, Professor of Computer-Aided Drug Design at Uppsala University and Coordinator of the COMBINE project, responsible for bringing the AMR Accelerator projects together.

The AMR Accelerator portfolio ranges from discovery to phase II clinical trials, and covers both tuberculosis and Gram-negative bacteria. It represents a substantial investment from the European Commission and pharmaceutical industry. Funded by the Innovative Medicines Initiative, the AMR Accelerator projects have a combined budget of €479 million. Together, they have progressed 44 antibacterial programmes over the past 5 years, and to date, the efforts have resulted in two completed Phase I studies, and five ongoing Phase I and II studies. However, the funding is only temporary.

The AMR Accelerator has successfully accelerated the development of promising therapeutics, but we need continued commitment to ensure that the antibiotics reach the next stage of development and, ultimately, the patients who need them.”

Anders Karlén, Professor of Computer-Aided Drug Design at Uppsala University

The success of the AMR Accelerator demonstrates the value of public-private partnerships by strengthening the antibiotic pipeline and providing tools and infrastructure for the global AMR research community. The AMR Accelerator has built a critical mass and created synergies that enable organisations to share expertise and resources. The results are tangible: high-quality science, a stronger antibiotic pipeline, and a legacy of research infrastructures including standardised infection models, clinical trial networks, open data resources. The key challenge for all nine projects is to ensure the long-term sustainability of assets, infrastructures, and expertise. The AMR Accelerator delivers a clear message: we need commitment and investment from governments, industry, and other stakeholders to protect our capacity to develop life-saving antibiotics.

The call to action was published in the comment section of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery. The text can be freely accessed from the journal’s website between 23 September and 6 October 2024.