Biopharmaceutical companies pledge more than $1 billion to develop new antibiotics

More than 20 biopharmaceutical companies around the world have pledged more than $1 billion toward the Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) Action Fund that launched today.

Pledges include $100 million from Pfizer and $50 million from Boehringer Ingelheim.

An initiative of the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA), the fund’s goal is to bring two to four new antibiotics to market by 2030. The collaboration between pharmaceutical companies, philanthropies, development banks, and multilateral organizations is meant to re-invigorate antibiotic development — which has been lagging amid a rapid rise in antibiotic-resistant infections.

“Unlike COVID-19, [antimicrobial resistance] is a predictable and preventable crisis. We must act together to rebuild the pipeline and ensure that the most promising and innovative antibiotics make it from the lab to patients,” said Thomas Cueni, director general of the IFPMA.

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  • July 9, 2020
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Pfizer to outsource more production as it prepares for COVID-19 vaccine

Pfizer is turning to its 200-strong network of outside contractors to make more of its existing medicines as it prepares for a potential COVID-19 vaccine., according to media reports.

The New York–based pharmaceutical giant said May 5 that it will invest at-risk to produce millions of doses of a coronavirus vaccine in 2020, boosting production to hundreds of millions of doses in 2021. Pfizer sites in Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri and Puurs, Belgium will serve as vaccine manufacturing centers — with more sites expected to be added to the list.

BioNTech — Pfizers’s partner in developing a COVID-19 vaccine — plans to ramp up production sites in Mainz and Idar-Oberstein, Germany,

The first participants in Pfizer and BioNTech’s Phase 1/2 clinical trial for the BNT162 vaccine program have already been dosed in Germany and the U.S.

“The short, less than four-month timeframe in which we’ve been able to move from pre-clinical studies …

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  • May 12, 2020
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