To stop superbugs, we must bring back golden age of antibiotics innovation

It’s impossible to imagine how many lives antibiotics have saved since penicillin was first synthesized by Alexander Fleming in 1928 - certainly tens, if not hundreds of millions.

After that serendipitous discovery at the Inoculation Department of St Mary's Hospital, London, drugmakers competed fiercely to develop new, lucrative classes of antibiotics.

Penicillin was followed by chloramphenicol, discovered in a pile of compost in Venezuela, and chlortetracycline, a bacterial excretion uncovered by researchers at Lederle Laboratories, now part of Pfizer (NYSE: PFE).