Sanofi SA (ADR) (SNY), GlaxoSmithKline plc (ADR) (GSK), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ): 5 Costliest Microbes in Financial History

Companies have had success in the past. Johnson & Johnson (NYSE:JNJ) fielded a rare antibiotic blockbuster in Levaquin in the last decade, which recorded sales of $1.6 billion in 2007. The company still researches infectious medicine, but has enjoyed much more success in oncology and anti-inflammatory diseases. The field is heating up, though. Novo Nordisk A/S (ADR) (NYSE:NVO) bought anti-infective therapy developer Xellia for $700 million this week. Talk about enthusiasm for market prospects.

Statistics also point to a huge opportunity. The World Health Organization estimates that there are 440,000 new cases of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis each year, which kills 150,000 people. That’s a mortality rate of 33% — much higher than the devastating Spanish Flu of 1918 — and it is only one instance of a resistant microbe. One study pegs the additional cost of contracting an infection from a resistant bacterium at between $18,000 and $30,000. That works out to about $35 billion per year in the United States alone.

Should an infectious microbe become completely resistant to current drugs, the next international pandemic could follow.