The recently published IQVIA Global Trends in R&D report makes for interesting and concerning reading at the same time about the current status of life sciences R&D. Trends around new drug approvals and launches, R&D pipelines, clinical trial activity and R&D funding over recent years are good news, even if they do come on the back of the bad news that has been the coronavirus pandemic. 

Infectious disease as a category has understandably featured strongly in R&D over the past couple of years, primarily as this has related to development of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutics. An absence of industry focus on broader antimicrobial and antibiotic R&D is the concerning part of this read. This reflects the well-publicised and rapidly growing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) crisis with its associated imbalance between the cost to develop new antibiotics, availability of financial resource and regulatory scope to meet these requirements and subsequent revenue potential to recoup the development cost. 

The current pandemic has proved that much can be achieved for public good when a common goal is recognised, well-communicated and everybody works together towards achieving this goal. Our hope at Biophys is that it will not take another pandemic for everybody to work together in a similar way to create an arsenal that can be used to beat AMR.