O'Neill eyes up to $2 billion for fund to fight superbugs

LONDON (Reuters) - A global fund to speed development of new antibiotics to counter the growing threat of drug-resistant superbugs is likely to need up to $2 billion, the head of a review backed by the British government said on Thursday. Former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill has urged the establishment of an innovation fund to support research, arguing that far too little is currently invested in hunting for new drugs against drug-resistant infections. "We've not yet come up with a number," O'Neill told an Economist pharmaceuticals conference on Thursday, when asked how big the fund would be. "My guess is probably no more than $2 billion." The problem of infections becoming drug-resistant has grown in recent years as bugs resistant to multiple drugs have developed and drugmakers have cut back investment in this field. O'Neill, who was asked last year by British Prime Minister David Cameron to take an economist's view of the issue, said earlier this month that philanthropists and governments should create a new fund to support drug research. In his first assessment of the threat, O'Neill estimated that so-called anti-microbial resistance (AMR) could kill an extra 10 million people a year and cost up to $100 trillion by 2050 if it was not brought under control. (Reporting by Ben Hirschler; Editing by Greg Mahlich)