The triumph of COVID-19 vaccine development and the discovery of effective treatments was only possible because of the unprecedented coordination of clinical trials. A process of testing – that often lasts over a decade – was compressed into less than nine months. This should now be the model for other major planetary health crises – namely, antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

To stay ahead of, and rapidly respond to, non-viral microbial threats, we believe it is time for a new forward-looking clinical trials infrastructure. A network of public clinical trials institutes could permanently connect pre-clinical academic ingenuity with the best of post-clinical commercial savvy and replenish the empty pipeline for new antibiotics. Action is urgently needed. That was the conclusion of a study we conducted with Adam Roberts, at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and Andrew Singer, at the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, which we recently posted on the SocArvix server.

AMR – the natural process whereby bacteria adapt to resist the antibiotics used to control them – poses a grave threat to global health and food production systems. Tens of thousands of people are already dying and many more are suffering from infections that were once treatable, and the problem is growing quickly.

Part of the solution lies in taking better care of the antibiotics we already have at our disposal. Every time an antibiotic is used, it creates an evolutionary advantage for bacteria that can withstand its effects. Over time, this leads to a resistant bacterial population. So antibiotics are a time-limited resource that must be used sparingly.

Bacteria have evolved resistance to every antibiotic ever developed. For example, it took just six years for resistance to penicillin, the first antibiotic, to become widespread in British hospitals.

The other part of the solution lies in stimulating the antibiotic research and development pipeline for new antibiotics.

Luring investors

But there are well-known economic barriers to commercial antibiotic research and development. The most important is that research, trials and licensing of new drugs is expensive – but new antibiotics yield less profit than drugs for cancer or chronic conditions and need to be protected from overuse to prevent resistance.

Read more:
https://theconversation.com/covid-vaccine-trials-were-a-triumph-now-we-need-a-similar-system-for-antibiotics-162130