Antimicrobial resistance: the greatest threat to modern medicine

26 November 2022

Microbes have survived over billions of years and continue to evolve to resist human attempts to kill them. In 2019, over 1.2 million people died as a direct result of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts this to increase tenfold by 2050.

Global efforts are emerging to address the funding, pricing, and manufacturing of new antibiotics, but that alone won’t fix the problem as in time, microbes will resist those too. However, Jiaxi Liu, investment analyst for Baillie Gifford’s Health Innovation Fund, says there is a glimmer of hope. New approaches and tools are already shaking up antimicrobial innovation and could set us on the correct course to solve the broader AMR crisis. These include:

new diagnostics that allow more accurate diagnosis and use of antibiotics;
vaccines and bacteriophages (viruses that kill bacteria) to prevent and combat infections; and
employing techniques such as CRISPR (systems that can be programmed to target specific stretches of genetic code and to edit DNA), synthetic biology, and machine learning to aid in the discovery and development of new solutions.

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