Short abstract:

Integrating new materialist approaches with political economic approaches to the study of pharmaceuticals, the paper investigates novel forms of antibiotics innovation that seek to overcome the biomedical and commercial sustainability constraints posed by antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

Long abstract:

This paper investigates novel forms of antibiotic innovation that aim to overcome the biomedical and commercial sustainability constraints posed by antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Modern antibiotics have underpinned public health and medicine for decades. However, the rapid spread of AMR progressively diminishes the efficacy of existing antibiotics. The search for novel antimicrobial treatments has become a top policy priority but is confronted with intricate scientific and commercial challenges. The growing threat of AMR, where bacteria rapidly develop resistance against drugs used to treat infections, has cast doubts on the effectiveness and sustainability of the prevailing 'biomedical arms race' model of public health. This model involves developing ever-more 'super-drugs' effective against an ever-growing population of multi-drug-resistant 'superbugs.'

This paper scrutinizes efforts and approaches within the leading global AMR-related product development partnerships that explicitly strive to break with conventional models of antibiotic research, development, and commercialization. Their aspiration is to radically rebuild pharmaceutical innovation systems in more sustainable ways.

Integrating new materialist approaches to the study of microbes and AMR with political-economic approaches to the study of pharmaceuticals, the paper analyzes an emergent approach to post-antibiotic innovation here tentatively termed 'eu-biotic.' This eu-biotic innovation shifts the focus in at least two significant ways: on the one hand, it seeks to reduce antibiotic use by decoupling investment incentives from economies of scale; on the other, it shifts the underlying clinical model from its default aim of 'combatting bugs' towards the aim of modulating virulence and decreasing pathogenicity.