Tom Clarke
Drug companies snub antibiotics as pipeline threatens to run dry
Nature 2003,425,225

Major drug companies are pulling out of antibiotic development - and their timing couldn't be worse, a leading meeting on infectious disease was told this week ...

... Resistance to antibiotics is growing - 20% of infections in US hospitals involve multidrug-resistant bacteria, reports the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Moreover the pipeline of new antibiotics is running dry: the FDA has approved just two this year.
"There's unequivocal evidence that antimicrobial research is on a steep downward slope" said John Edwards, head of policy at the Infectious Diseases Society of America ...

... There were 10% fewer presentations of new drug candidates than last year, and a slump in attendees from industry. "Attendance is down, the number of new antimicrobial agents is down," said Barbara Murray of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, chair of the meeting's programme committe ...

... Levy suggested that antibiotics be subjected to lighter regulation and given more public-research funds, to reflect the fact that infectious diseases place a burden on society. "These are societal drugs," he argued ...