Question: Yeah, the main problem your research is thst bacteria can all too often find a way around the antibiotics pretty fast and it takes years of tests for the new antibiotics to be released, how do you think this process (of approval) can be shorter, if you had the power to do so, how would you change it?

Daniela Lobo answered on 15 Jun 2016:

Hi VictorDobos,

Jonathan made a good point – the approval process is lengthy, but it is a necessary thing. Since the drug is discovered and manufactured, it takes several steps until it reaches the market, from clinical trials to test its safety to pharmacovigilance post-approval (means looking for the side effects of the drug after already being in the market). This whole process normally takes more than 10 years!
One interesting thing to think about is the whole process of making an antibiotic. An antibiotic is something that is suppose to be taken for a short number of days, by a certain number of people. It’s a short-term drug in most of the cases (by comparison with a long-term needed drug, like the ones used for chronic diseases, like for example diabetes). That means that the pharmaceutical industry invested all that money and time into making a drug that will bring them little monetary return. For a while, industries were struggling with that and many closed their antibiotic discovery department. That could be one of the reasons why now we have such a small pipeline (set of candidate drugs that a pharmaceutical company has at discovery or development stages) of new antibiotics.