Phar­ma gi­ants re­turn to an­tibi­otics hud­dle to launch $1B ven­ture fund — re­port

Big Phar­ma ex­it­ed from the an­tibi­otics space one by one. And now they may be com­ing back to­geth­er.

Pfiz­er, Eli Lil­ly, No­vo Nordisk, Boehringer In­gel­heim, Bay­er Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, Mer­ck KGaA and the Amer­i­can Mer­ck — one of the last gi­ants stand­ing — are team­ing up to cre­ate a $1 bil­lion for-prof­it ven­ture to bet on small biotechs de­vel­op­ing mid-stage an­tibi­otics, Ed Sil­ver­man re­port­ed for STAT.

Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials from Ger­many, Swe­den, France and the UK, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from Well­come Trust and Pew Char­i­ta­ble Trusts, will join the com­pa­nies to an­nounce the ini­tia­tive on Ju­ly 9, Sil­ver­man wrote. The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion and the Eu­ro­pean In­vest­ment Bank are al­so in­volved in what is be­ing billed as a new so­lu­tion to the “an­tibi­ot­ic in­no­va­tion chal­lenge.”

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