Overcoming scientific and structural bottlenecks in antibacterial discovery and development

Abstract

Antibiotic resistance is becoming an increasing threat, with too few novel antibiotics coming to market to replace those lost due to resistance development. Efforts by the pharmaceutical industry to screen for and design novel antibacterials have not been successful, with several companies minimizing or closing down their antibacterial research units, leading to a loss of skills and know-how. At the same time, antibiotic innovation in academia is not filling the void due to misaligned incentive structures and lack of vital knowledge of drug discovery. The scientific and structural difficulties in discovering new antibiotics have only begun to be appreciated in the latest years. Part of the problem has been a paradigm shift within both industry and academia to focus on 'rational' drug development with an emphasis on single targets and high-throughput screening of large chemical libraries, which may not be suited to target bacteria. The very particular aspects of 'targeting an organism inside another organism' have not been given enough attention. In this paper, researcher interviews have complemented literature studies to delve deeper into the specifics of the different scientific and structural barriers, and some potential solutions are offered.

Keywords: Academic drug discovery; antibiotic innovation; antibiotic resistance; novel antibiotics.