Antibacterials represent one of the largest pharmaceutical markets with global sales beyond $25 billion. Over the last decade, the rise and ongoing dissemination of bacteria that are resistant against available antibiotics have created a serious, unmet medical need in this field. At the same time, the pipeline of new antibiotics is drying up. Thus, infections are becoming harder and sometimes even impossible to treat. According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), approximately two million people acquire bacterial infections in US hospitals each year and about 100.000 die as a result. About 70 percent of those infections are resistant to at least one drug. Moreover, such resistant strains are no longer confined to hospitals. Since 2000, the CDC has repeatedly reported community-acquired outbreaks of pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a particularly worrisome bacterium which can infect the heart, bones, lungs, and bloodstream. Mortality rates have reached up to 50%. The accumulated financial burden of bacterial infections to healthcare systems in the developed world is currently estimated around $ 20 billion - and the trends towards increasing numbers of infection and resistance show no sign of abating.
Companies developing novel antibiotics that can overcome resistance will clearly drive future market growth. Moreover, these companies should benefit from an increasingly supportive environment as policy makers have now realized the tremendous threat to public health. At the same time, a number of big-name antibiotics will go off patent over the coming years and aggressive marketing will cease. These developments, together with an overall shorter development timeline for antibacterials compared to other medical conditions represent a highly attractive commercial opportunity for truly innovative companies in this space.
