Antibiotics: How to fix a broken market

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 20 March 2023

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Antibiotics stopped providing big gains for pharmaceutical companies decades ago, but as bacteria become more resistant to drugs, the world needs new classes of antibiotics to be discovered if we want to prevent the next global health crisis.

Dr Tina Joshi, Associate Professor of Molecular Microbiology at the University of Plymouth explains that it’s more likely antimicrobial resistance will kill large numbers of human beings before climate change does. Kasim Kutay, CEO of the investment fund Novo Holdings tells us that for big pharma companies, antibiotics are seen as a contribution to society rather than an investment that can provide a profit.

How can firms be convinced to invest in an unprofitable product? We hear how Netflix might provide a good model and we explore research in Phages - a bacteria specialised in eating other bacteria. Phages are being championed by some as a potential substitute for antibiotics. One patient in Minnesota tells us Phages saved his life.

Presenter / producer: Stefania Gozzer Image: Dr Tina Joshi; Credit: Lloyd Russell

Transcript

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0:00.0	When you meet someone online, can you trust they are who they say they are?
0:04.0	I just started to interact with this person.
0:06.3	I keep thinking so much about you.
0:08.3	Love Janessa, a true crime podcast from the BBC World Service and CBC podcasts,
0:14.0	investigating the murky world of online romance camps.
0:17.4	It's all well planned.
0:19.7	She said, if you really loved me, you do what I asked you to do.
0:23.7	Catch up with the whole series now.
0:25.7	Search for Love, Janessa, wherever you found this podcast.
0:31.6	Hello, I'm Stefania Goetzer.
0:34.1	Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC.
0:37.7	Resistance to antibiotics is considered to be one of the top 10 threats to global health.
0:43.6	It's more likely that antibiotic resistance or antimicrobial resistance will kill us first
0:48.7	before climate change does.
0:51.3	But this growing demand for new solutions against drug-resistant bacteria is failing
0:56.3	to attract investments to develop new products in the antibiotic industry. The demand is there.
1:02.5	The issue is the economic model is broken. We'll find out why on this edition of Business Daily.
1:14.4	Imagine a world where a pneumonia diagnosis is as devastating as being told you have cancer
1:19.8	or where urine infections have become an incurable disease.
1:24.1	For some people around the globe, this is a reality.
1:27.3	In the last decades, a growing number of bacteria has developed resistance to antibiotics,
1:32.6	the basis of modern medicine.
	...

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