NW biotech firms to collaborate at high-level event
CHIEF Medical Officer Dame Sally Davies is to join North West biotech companies at a major conference focused on the global threat to public health posed by antibiotic resistance.
The firms, including AstraZeneca, Epistem, Redx Pharma and Euprotec will feature alongside public health experts from around the world at the BioInfect 2013 conference, which is being held at Alderley Park in Cheshire on November 26th.
The event, hosted by North West industry group Bionow, will feature contributions from policy makers, public health experts, academics and senior executives from the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries.
Dame Sally has likened the threat posed by antibiotic resistance to that of international terrorism, echoing concerns from the World Health Organisation and other authorities about its potentially disastrous economic, social and political ramifications.
BioInfect 2013 is supported by BioHub and Healthtech & Medicines KTN will contribute to setting the international agenda regarding tackling the problem.
Dame Sally Davies, said: “The soaring number of antibiotic-resistant infections poses such a great threat to society that in 20 years’ time we could be taken back to a 19th century environment where everyday infections kill us as a result of routine operations.”
Dr Geoff Davison, CEO of Bionow, said: “There is no doubt that the ability of bacteria to adapt to and outsmart existing medicines could is already having serious public health consequences. And yet there’s an equally strong consensus that the public health response globally is at best disjointed and inadequate.
“A number of issues greatly exacerbate the problem, not least over-prescribing of antibiotics in human and animal health. It’s also evident that the commercial model for antibiotic development needs rethinking. If you are a drug company, it can make a lot of sense to focus your research efforts elsewhere.”
Redx Pharma chief executive, Dr Neil Murray, the largest UK biotech working on the development of new antibiotics, commented: “We are at the tipping point where some 70% of known bacteria have developed resistance to one or more antibiotics. In the EU alone, some 25,000 people die each year as a result of a serious drug resistant infection – mostly acquired in healthcare settings.
“Most of the antibiotics we have now were discovered before the 1970s and over the past three decades only two new classes of antibiotics have become available. What’s required now is a global collaborative effort across all fronts to avert this potential public health disaster.”
