• Question: So why cant we just find another drug that works.

    Asked by Jake to Abid, Donna, Sanjib, Thomas, Avril on 13 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Donna Johnson

      Donna Johnson answered on 13 Jun 2017:

      That’s what a lot of people are trying to do for various diseases. For antibiotics, its been a long time since the last new one was developed, probably because we had a few that worked and its very expensive and time consuming to develop new drugs. But, now we are a lot more aware of the issues of resistance, hopefully development will start again at a higher rate.

    • Photo: Avril Tucker

      Avril Tucker answered on 13 Jun 2017:

      Good question! If you think about it from a drug manufacturers perspective. They need to invest billions in getting new antibiotics to market. If I do my job well, that antibiotic will only be used if absolutely necessary. So, the drug company will not get their money back. It is much more profitable for them to develop drugs that people need to take every day for the rest of their life. Rather than one time only, for a week or two. The government are now incentivising big pharmaceutical companies by giving them research grants to develop new antibiotics but those are at least 10+ years away.

    • Photo: Sanjib Bhakta

      Sanjib Bhakta answered on 13 Jun 2017:

      Brilliant point! I could not agree more with you. We are running out of options for alternative drugs with different mechanisms of tackling the disease. Our lab research is based research on your idea of finding new drug. Now let me tell you designing, discovering new drugs are extremely expensive, time consuming, challenging and comes with the fear of failure….while market for developing a new drug against infectious diseases (unlike making lifestyle changing drugs) are not profitable. We can overcome all these challenges with the advancement of our knowledge in science. hope one day you will join the force to search for new drugs. I am exited you can see.

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