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Recent News 34 : Interview of Henry Skinner, PhD, CEO of the AMR Action Fund
AMR Action Fund: Changing our approach to antibiotics
Henry Skinner, PhD, CEO of the AMR Action Fund, illustrates the true picture of the threat of AMR and explains how the Fund is working to change the way society values antibiotics.
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is evolving at a rapid pace and is becoming not only an increasing global health threat, but also has the potential to be a major economic burden. With this said, it is more important than ever for organisations, governments, and innovators across the globe to focus efforts and work collaboratively to eradicate the threat.
Headquartered in the US, the AMR Action Fund is the world’s largest venture capital fund dedicated to investing in antimicrobial therapeutics. The Fund is designed to support companies developing potentially lifesaving antimicrobial therapeutics and was launched following conversations with the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations, the World Health Organization, the European Investment Bank, and the Wellcome Trust.
The Innovation Platform spoke with Henry Skinner, PhD, CEO of the AMR Action Fund, to find out more about the Fund, the companies and research it supports, and the current state of AMR across the globe.
Can you please elaborate on what the AMR Action Fund is and why a fund like this is so important?
The AMR Action Fund is a mission-driven investment fund that focuses its investments on companies developing urgently needed antibiotics. Over the last few decades, antimicrobial resistance has emerged as one of the greatest health challenges facing the world. AMR refers to when bacteria and other microbes evolve and become resistant to the drugs on which we rely to treat infections, namely antibiotics. Recent studies indicate that AMR now contributes to 4.5 million deaths annually.¹ That’s alarming.
Also alarming is the fact that very few new antibiotics are in development and almost nobody is investing in this area because of the market challenges associated with antibiotics. The market for antibiotics is so dysfunctional that, in recent years, we have seen companies successfully take an antibiotic through clinical development and obtain regulatory approval, only to go bankrupt or be sold for pennies on the dollar. The AMR Action Fund was set up to invest in companies that are developing therapies for high-priority pathogens and to help drive policy changes that bring private investment back to this lifesaving field of medicine.
What is the main mission of the Action Fund?
Our goal is to help enable the launch of two to four new antibiotics by 2030, and to broadly change how society values antibiotics.
Antibiotics are not big moneymakers. In our current system, a drug’s value is determined by its sales volume. That model works well in other therapeutic areas, but not antibiotics. Antibiotics deliver incredible value to society – they cure infections and enable a wide range of modern medical procedures like surgery, chemotherapy, and organ transplants – but patients typically take them for only a few days and doctors are trained to use new antibiotics sparingly, especially the newest and most powerful antibiotics, to preserve their effectiveness. While that’s good for public health, it limits an antibiotic’s commercial potential and investors flee to more financially rewarding areas. We need policymakers to act on this and pursue market-based solutions that incentivise investors and reward the successful development of innovative antibiotics.
Can you share some key achievements/breakthroughs that have come from investments made by the Fund?
We have invested in ten companies so far and will continue to grow our portfolio. The companies we have invested in are targeting many of the World Health Organization’s highest-priority bacteria, and one of our portfolio companies obtained U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for an antibiotic to treat urinary tract infections, which tens of millions of women suffer from every year in the US.
In addition to investing, we have supported important research to help better understand the threat of AMR, including helping to set up the Cancer and AMR Consortium. The Consortium published two significant studies in recent months showing that cancer patients in both inpatient and outpatient settings are at higher risk of developing antibiotic-resistant infections compared with patients who do not have cancer. It is very important that clinicians, patients, policymakers, and the public understand that AMR is rapidly eroding the foundations of modern medicine.
Most of us take antibiotics for granted. We routinely use them to soothe toddlers with earaches or clear a case of strep throat, often overlooking the fact that antibiotics enable a huge range of lifesaving and life-improving procedures. Without effective antibiotics, surgeries become less safe, chemotherapy becomes less safe, organ transplants and joint replacements may not be viable, and even common dental procedures will become riskier.
Why is innovation so important when it comes to tackling the threat of AMR and for infection control in general?
Bacteria are incredible. They have been evolving for billions of years, and they will continue to evolve no matter what we throw at them. In fact, when Alexander Fleming won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of penicillin, he warned that the day would soon come when bacteria would evolve and become resistant to it.
Unfortunately, the drugs we use today to kill harmful bacteria haven’t evolved all that much since the days of Fleming. There was a flurry of pertinent discoveries in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, and then antibiotic R&D fell off a cliff. As resistant infections have emerged in recent decades, doctors have been forced to reach back in time and rely on very old antibiotics that can have some nasty side effects. Patients deserve better.
To drive innovation, though, we need to support and invest in scientists who are developing antibiotics that have new mechanisms of action for killing bacteria and that more precisely target bad bacteria. We also need better, faster, and more precise diagnostics so that clinicians can get the right drug to every patient.
What are the key elements needed to drive change when it comes to AMR and reducing the threat? How can governments and regulatory bodies support this mission?
Policymakers around the world, particularly those in G7 countries, have for years been talking about the problem of AMR and acknowledging the need for polices that incentivise investment and reward innovation. It is now time for them to take action and enact such policies.
There has been some progress on this front, particularly in the UK, which has launched a novel subscription model to pay for new antibiotics. That is great and the UK deserves a lot of credit for its leadership in this area. The EU is also making progress on enacting an incentive, and Italy has moved in the right direction. But AMR is a global problem, and we need other high-income countries, especially the US, enacting policies that will attract private investment and enable scientists to do the type of innovative R&D that the world needs.
References
- Antimicrobial Resistance Collaborators. (2022). Global burden of bacterial antimicrobial resistance in 2019: a systematic analysis. The Lancet; 399(10325): P629-655. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)02724-0
- https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/amr-action-fund-changing-our-approach-to-antibiotics/59637/
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