New thinking is required to create desperately needed new antibiotics. We must act now Put yourself, for a moment, in the shoes of a pharmaceutical company boss.
You face a big decision about where to direct your R&D budget. Both options require multi-billion pound investment over 10 to 15 years in cutting-edge but high-risk research.
You could focus on cancer drugs where competition is fierce but prices predictably high and market size easy to forecast.
Or, you could choose to develop new antibiotics; drugs essential to modern medicine, but with a peculiarly unpredictable market, often low prices and breakthrough products likely to be reserved for only a handful of hardest-to-treat patients.
The dilemma cuts to the heart of the tricky yet crucial question of how to fix the dysfunctional antibiotics market. The Daily Telegraph
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