Antibiotic innovation is being abandoned and vital expertise is being lost.

Drug-resistant infections are now one of the world’s biggest killers, associated with more than 4.7 million deaths globally per year and rising. A major contributing factor to this is the dwindling number of effective antibiotics, following three decades of pharmaceutical industry withdrawal from antimicrobial research and development (R&D). As resistance erodes the effectiveness of existing treatments, there is an urgent need to revive antimicrobial R&D, to ensure the supply of innovative new antibiotics as existing treatments become less effective in the face of drug resistance.

However, rebuilding the antibiotic pipeline requires more than investment. Decades of industry withdrawal have also led to a loss of scientific knowledge, technical expertise and institutional memory, as experienced researchers and specialists retired or moved into other fields. This erosion of expertise has made antibiotic innovation slower and more challenging just as the need for new treatments has become more urgent. Strengthening and reconnecting the global antimicrobial R&D community is therefore essential to ensuring that the next generation of antibiotics can be discovered, developed and delivered.