The pipeline of new drugs to fight superbugs remains “worryingly thin” and has shrunk by 35% in the last five years, experts have warned, predicting the annual number of deaths linked to drug-resistant infections globally will double to 8 million by 2050.
The number of projects from large pharma companies has shrunk by 35% over the past five years, from 92 to 60 medicines in development, according to a report from the Access to Medicine Foundation (AMF), a Netherlands-based non-profit group, and the Wellcome Trust.
“Overall, however, the R&D pipeline remains worryingly thin, and industry investment has lost momentum,” said Jayasree K Iyer, the chief executive of AMF. She described drug resistance as the biggest single threat to healthcare worldwide.
More than 1 million people die each year directly from drug resistant infections but they contribute to 4 million deaths worldwide a year. Both figures are forecast to double by 2050 – to nearly 2 million and more than 8 million respectively.
Lesson: Buy and hold, public will empty coffers for superbug research when it happens, stocks zoom to the moon.
I am not your investment advisor
Any particular public companies you’re thinking about?
NVO just got hammered for some seemingly short term reasons. Not investment advice, but it looks cheap to me.
Plus it’s not US based, so when we inevitably crumble, you can trade shares for food and ammo.
Thank you
It’s almost like capitalism only incentivizes innovation in profit seeking, not actual useful technology. Who could have predicted this?
I mean, I suppose it’s theoretically possible I would have the capacity to worry about another issue posing a massive and credible threat to the fabric of our society…
We need to make sure the research is beneficial to the stock market first.
