Inside the race to stop drug-resistant infections

It’s a threat that rarely makes headlines but kills millions. Antimicrobial resistance, or AMR, occurs when germs evolve to defeat the drugs meant to kill them. It’s a silent pandemic linked to nearly five million deaths each year.¹

For Roche scientists, this isn’t a distant problem. It’s a daily battle to protect modern medicine.

“I have a friend who learnt the hard way,” says scientist Emmanuelle Cottreel.. Although she was given antibiotics for pneumonia, her condition worsened. The bacteria were resistant. “It took her a year and a half to get back to health.”

Ken Bradley, who leads infectious diseases discovery for Roche in Basel, Switzerland, says the stakes are high. Modern medicine relies on managing infections, but “if we don’t have lifesaving antibiotics, the whole system is at risk,” he says. It’s why his team is focused on one of medicine’s toughest challenges: developing a new class of antibiotics.

Staying a step ahead of the enemy

The challenge is an enemy that has perfected survival. “Bacteria have been on the planet for over a billion years,” Ken says. “They are experts at evolving. We need to stay one step ahead.”

That’s why simply making more of the same antibiotics won’t work. “Bacteria are very clever,” explains Roche scientist Séverine Louvel, who has spent a decade at Roche researching new antibiotics. If a new drug is too similar to an old one, “they will know exactly what to do and become resistant quickly. We need to develop radically new antibiotics.”

Séverine is driven by this mission. She recalls an academic clinical trial expert who was excited to test her team’s new drug.

Leading the search for solutions

Roche remains committed to the challenging work of developing new classes of antibiotics, an area from which many have exited. The company’s strength lies in combining pharmaceutical R&D with leadership in diagnostics – a dual expertise crucial to targeting the right infection.

The team knows they can’t succeed alone; so they collaborate with governments, industry, academia and the public to develop antibiotics. It’s a race to ensure a scraped knee or minor surgery doesn’t become a death sentence.