Merck, through a partnership with more than 20 pharmaceutical companies and organizations, aims to bridge the gap between the innovative early antibiotic pipeline and patients, with an investment of $100 million over 10 years in the AMR Action Fund. The fund’s collective goal is to bring two to four new antibiotics to market by 2030.
 
Rising levels of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) can make current antibiotics less effective. As of early 2023, the AMR Action Fund has invested in five small biotech companies advancing research for new medicines to fight some of the most dangerous bacteria as determined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization.
 
According to Merck, collaborative efforts that are key to addressing AMR include: policy reforms to support development of new antibiotics, responsible prescribing and use of antimicrobials, and tracking resistance trends, among others.
 
Major scientific, regulatory and economic challenges discourage innovation in antibiotics, resulting in a decline in the number of companies conducting antimicrobial R&D. Merck and others have suggested a series of policy reforms across several regions of the world to support antibiotic innovation.
 
Merck is making investments to support antimicrobial stewardship (AMS), a broad term for the implementation of evidence-based policies to slow resistance to current antimicrobials. Investments and partnerships aim to help hospitals develop and implement patient-centered AMS programs that are customized based on factors like epidemiology, clinical setting and resource availability to support the responsible prescribing and use of antimicrobials. 
 
Tracking resistance trends and using data to help doctors prescribe the right medicines remains critical. One of the largest and longest-running AMR surveillance programs, our Study for Monitoring Antimicrobial Resistance Trends (SMART) program has collected nearly 500,000 Gram-Negative bacterial isolates from around 220 sites in more than 60 countries since 2002.
 
“AMR is not a future problem – it’s here now, threatening human, animal and environmental health as we know it. We must take swift, collaborative action to help reduce the risk of AMR before it’s too late,” said Jennifer Zachary, executive vice president and general counsel at Merck and member of the Global Leaders Group on AMR.