Developing new drugs is time-consuming and expensive. Only one out of five drugs to treat infectious diseases make it past the initial human testing phase, leading economists to estimate that it takes about $1 billion in research and time to produce each new drug. Given that antibiotics are only used for a few days and are expected to be available at little expense, most major pharmaceutical companies have stopped investing in new antibiotics. The number in the pipeline has plummeted. The Pew Charitable Trusts is one of the only entities keeping track of how many are in the pipeline and they provide continuous updates here and they have a data visualization of the significance of the lack of a pipeline.
