Despite mounting concern over antibiotic resistance, a new report finds that none of 43 antibiotics currently in development target the most dangerous bacteria, making them insufficient to tackle the fast-growing public health threat.
Meanwhile, new antibiotics are few and far between. Just 11 were approved since 2017, but nine of these offer limited benefits over existing treatments. Why? They belong to classes of medicines where resistance has already taken hold. In fact, most of the new antibiotics that became available in recent decades are variations of antibiotics that were discovered by the 1980s.
The findings portray a “persistent failure to develop, manufacture, and distribute” effective new antibiotics and combat a problem that is spreading across the globe, according to the World Health Organization, which released the report.
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