A global fund to encourage pharmaceutical companies to search for and develop new classes of antibiotics could be set up, the chair of the UK’s independent Review of Antimicrobial Resistance Jim O’Neill has indicated.
Speaking at the Pharma Summit, organised by the Economist Intelligence Unit, in London on 26 February 2015, O’Neill acknowledged that this was an unattractive area of research for the pharmaceutical industry because any new class of antibiotics was likely to be reserved for use only when existing drugs had failed.
Support mechanisms and incentives could include some form of global innovation fund, worth up to US$2bn, he said, more details of which will be unveiled officially in May 2015.
