THE TELEGRAPH | The pipeline to develop new antibiotics contains few drugs that can help counter a “silent pandemic” of superbugs, according to the World Health Organization. The UN health agency warned that none of the 43 antibiotics currently in clinical development “sufficiently address” rising drug-resistance in the world’s most dangerous 13 pathogens, while the antibiotic pipeline is “near static”. The growing threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) – predicted to kill 10 million people by 2050 if it continues at its current rate – means that, increasingly, the treatments we rely on to kill infections are not working and new ones are needed. So far, the consequences have been felt most keenly in resource-constrained settings and among vulnerable groups. Already, superbugs that can tolerate drugs kill roughly 700,000 a year, while around 30 per cent of newborns die due to bacterial infections which are resistant to first-line of defence antibiotics. Carb-X is funding research to accelerate the development of innovative products. The Global Antibiotic R&D Partnership (GARDP) – created by the WHO and the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) – has been established to develop innovative treatments.