About

ALTERBIOTIC investigates the multifaceted global crisis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by focusing on the innovation challenges involved in developing new, effective treatments against bacterial infections, and multi-drug-resistant ‘superbugs’ particularly.  

Antibiotic drugs – encapsulating the triumph of modern medicine over bacteria – are indispensable for healthcare and public health. Yet, their decades-long excessive global use has rapidly undermined their efficacy, as bacteria are becoming resistant to the very antibiotics that once easily eradicated them. In a recent report, the World Health Organization has found that already 1 in 6 infections occurring worldwide shows resistance to those antibiotics commonly used to treat the infection (World Health Organization 2025). Already today, the global health burden imposed by AMR is considerable. AMR was directly responsible for an estimated 1.2 million deaths globally in 2019, with additionally nearly 5 million deaths associated with resistant infections—exceeding the death toll of major infectious diseases like HIV/AIDS and malaria (Murray et al. 2022). Beyond this health burden, AMR is also projected to impose a staggering economic burden, with global losses potentially reaching up to 100 trillion USD by 2050 (Countryman and McDonnell 2025) due to a combination of escalating healthcare expenditures, prolonged illness, increased mortality, and a significant decline in livestock production. 

AMR has been formally recognized by leading global institutions—including the United Nations (UN), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the G7 and G20 summits—as a critical threat to global health security and sustainable development that demands urgent, coordinated, and multi-sectoral action. 

Whilst the main drivers of AMR are decade-long overuse and misuse of antibiotics globally, it is exacerbated by a significant decline in antibiotic R&D and resulting innovation crisis. Despite the urgent need for new, effective antibiotics, the big industry players that have traditionally supplied society with new antibiotics have largely abandoned this field over the past decades due to scientific and commercial challenges.  

This predicament presents society with the challenge of revising the policy frameworks and innovation models that guide how essential medicines are developed, valued, and deployed across society. ALTERBIOTIC investigates current efforts to rebuild the antimicrobial innovation ecosystem by examining how key actors from science, industry, and policy imagine and pursue robust solutions to the AMR health and innovation crisis. Empirically, the project maps emerging alternative clinical, regulatory, and economic approaches to drive biomedical R&D in this field and analyses the complex political and technical ‘innovation challenges’ related to the timely, sustainable, and equitable development of new, effective antibacterial therapies. 

ALTERBIOTIC conceptualizes AMR as a deep-seated crisis that puts into question dominant regimes of health, growth, and security, which have long depended on readily available and effective pharmaceuticals. 

 

References

Countryman, Amanda, and Anthony McDonnell. 2025. “Modelling the Global Economic Impact of Antimicrobial Resistance in Humans.” https://www.cgdev.org/publication/modelling-global-economic-impact-antimicrobial-resistance-humans. 

Murray, Christopher J. L. et al. 2022. “Global Burden of Bacterial Antimicrobial Resistance in 2019: A Systematic Analysis.” The Lancet 399(10325):629–55. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02724-0. 

World Health Organization. 2025. Global Antibiotic Resistance Surveillance Report 2025: WHO Global Antimicrobial Resistance and Use Surveillance System (GLASS). Geneva.