The politics of alter-biotic innovation: Examining the making of alternative regimes of biomedical innovation in response to the global health crisis of antimicrobial resistance

Description

ALTERBIOTIC investigates the multifaceted global crisis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) by focusing on the innovation challenges involved in developing new, effective treatments for multi-drug-resistant 'superbugs'. Doing so, the project conceptualizes AMR as a unbounded crisis of modern biopolitics which puts into question dominant regimes of health, growth, and security, which have long depended on the chemical infrastructures of readily available and effective pharmaceuticals.

Antibiotic drugs - encapsulating the triumph of modern medicine over bacteria - are indispensable for healthcare and public health. Yet, their decades-long excessive global use has rapidly undermined their efficacy, as bacteria are becoming resistant to the very antibiotics that once easily eradicated them. On top of that, despite the urgent need for new, effective antibiotics, the big industry players that have traditionally supplied society with new antibiotics have largely abandoned this field over the past decades which has exacerbated the global AMR crisis. This predicament presents society with the challenge of revising the policy frameworks and innovation models that guide how essential medicines are developed, valued, and deployed across society.

ALTERBIOTIC investigates current efforts to rebuild the antimicrobial innovation ecosystem by examining how key actors from science, industry, and policy imagine and pursue robust solutions to the AMR health and innovation crisis. Empirically, the project maps emerging alternative clinical, regulatory, and economic approaches to drive biomedical R&D in this field and analyzes the complex political and technical 'innovation challenges' related to the timely, sustainable, and equitable development of new, effective antibacterial therapies.