Rick Brown

Despite the growing crisis of antibiotic resistance, large pharma companies have been exiting the arena for years, including Allergan, Sanofi and Novartis in 2018 alone. Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, is one of the few remaining large companies that continues to invest in the discovery and development of new antimicrobials. Rick Brown, who has worked at Genentech for 12 years and is vice president of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, spoke with Katie Kingwell about the challenges of discovering novel antibiotics and how Genentech approaches this daunting but important task.