Editor's note: This story has been corrected to note that there are 500 workers currently employed at Pfizer's Melbourne site.
Warning of a "silent pandemic" spreading across the globe, Pfizer is taking the fight against antimicrobial resistance Down Under.
Pfizer announced Tuesday that it has invested 150 million Australian dollars (about $98 million) to build a new manufacturing facility at its Australian site in Melbourne, where the company will help produce new antimicrobial treatments aimed at addressing the rising tide of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).
The new plant will house two new lyophilizers, or freeze-drying machines, which are essential to the antimicrobial manufacturing process.
In a press release seen by Fierce Pharma, Pfizer said the new facility will make its Melbourne site one of the “most advanced” drugmaking plants in Australia focused on AMR. The site will incorporate robotics to help enhance productivity, and it’s been selected for a trial of artificial intelligence technology that will be used to support “key site processes.’
The expansion project is expected to come online by mid-2025 and kick off commercial manufacturing in 2026, Pfizer said. It's currently unclear how many new jobs will be created on top of the 500 manufacturing roles that already exist at the site, a Pfizer spokesperson said, adding that the company will begin recruitment once its new production line comes online next year.
“A key strategic pillar of Pfizer’s product innovation work is our effort to help slow the spread of antimicrobial resistance, one of the biggest global health threats of our time,” Anne Harris, managing director for Pfizer Australia and New Zealand, said in a statement.
Sometimes referred to as “the silent pandemic,” AMR is considered by the World Health Organization to be a top 10 area of public health concern, according to Pfizer’s release. AMR, which is driven by the misuse or overuse of antimicrobials, complicates the treatment of infections, in turn increasing the risk of disease spread, severe illness and death.
Annual deaths from AMR are predicted to rise to 10 million by 2050 and—without intervention—it’s estimated that by that same year, 10,000 Australians will die annually from drug-resistant infections.
Aside from antimicrobials, Pfizer’s Melbourne site also cranks out drugs for cancer as well as anesthetics, anti-inflammatory meds and more. The site exports the products it makes to more than 60 countries around the globe, Pfizer pointed out.
Health officials have been sounding alarms about AMR for the past several years, though the low profitability of developing new antibiotics has stymied efforts to counteract the threat.
Last April, Michael Craig, director of the Antimicrobial Resistance Coordination and Strategy Unit at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told Fierce Healthcare that one possible solution to the AMR conundrum could be the development of decolonization agents.
Decolonization revolves around killing or neutralizing pathogens that already exist in the microbiomes of individual people, which can in turn lead people to unknowingly transmit bacteria or fungi to others.
Elsewhere, Eli Lilly in June penned a deal with OpenAI in a bid to develop new treatments to overcome AMR.
Under the pact, for which financial details weren’t revealed, Lilly plans to use generative AI to help come up with new solutions for microbial infections.