The talent crisis in pharma manufacturing: Why building future leaders is critical to fighting AMR

USFDA and EMA reviewers, microbiologists trained on resistance mechanisms. The Indian generic-era industry was not built to produce that talent at the depth the next phase requires.

The missing talent layer in AMR preparedness

The workforce challenge is increasingly emerging as a structural risk to global health preparedness in the field of AMR. According to the AMR Industry Alliance’s “Leaving the Lab” report, the global antimicrobial resistance research workforce consists of roughly 3,000 active researchers compared to nearly 46,000 in oncology, highlighting the widening imbalance in scientific focus and talent allocation.

This imbalance is even greater in India. While carrying one of the highest global burdens of antibiotic resistance, the country contributes just about 1 percent to the global antibacterial research and development pipeline; the majority of research occurs in high-income countries. At the same time, the very structure of antibiotic innovation has undergone significant change. Large pharmaceutical companies, which historically played a major role in antibiotic discovery, specialist training, and scientific mentorship, have gradually scaled down or exited this segment due to weak commercial returns associated with antibiotic development.

Instead, small and medium sized enterprises are now leading a significant portion of antibiotic development. While these enterprises are often highly innovation-driven, they frequently operate under significant financial and operational constraints. Currently, over half of these firms worldwide find it hard to secure even a single year’s operational funding limiting their ability to invest in long-term talent and mentorship ecosystems. The result is a fragile innovation ecosystem, one where scientific ambition exists, but long-term specialist capability-building and institutional knowledge transfer continue to weaken.

Modern pharmaceutical manufacturing, particularly sterile injectable and aseptic manufacturing, requires highly specialised expertise across contamination control, process validation, data integrity, quality assurance, and global compliance systems. At the same time, regulatory science has become significantly more sophisticated, demanding capabilities in areas such as global regulatory harmonization, evolving GMP standards, pharmacovigilance, and quality-by-design frameworks. Meanwhile, microbiology and infectious disease research, both critical to understanding patterns of resistance, are struggling to recruit and retain talent.

In many ways, the industry today is not facing a shortage of entry-level graduates alone; it is facing a shortage of experienced mid-career and senior professionals capable of navigating complex manufacturing systems, leading regulatory strategy, mentoring scientific teams, and translating innovation into scalable pharmaceutical solutions.

Why the talent pipeline is shrinking

This widening disparity stems from a number of structural reasons. First and foremost is the market dynamics of antibiotics. New antibiotics are deliberately used sparingly, as opposed to drugs used for chronic conditions, to prevent resistance, thus reducing their commercial potential. Instead, investment keeps flowing into more profitable therapeutic spaces, which reduces the incentive for companies to pursue long-term careers in AMR research. This has a trickle-down effect on talent. When career pathways seem unclear, researchers and clinicians move to another field. Even in advanced markets, infectious diseases fields are experiencing decreasing interest where most of the training programs find it difficult to enroll the candidates because of lower compensation and less long-term prospects. Equally important, however, is the widening disconnect between academia and industry.

Pharmaceutical education in many institutions continues to remain heavily theory-oriented and insufficiently aligned with the realities of modern pharmaceutical manufacturing and evolving regulatory expectations. This further minimizes exposure to advanced areas including continuous manufacturing, aseptic processing, and global compliance frameworks. Specialized challenges linked to AMR, including antimicrobial stewardship, containment protocols, resistance surveillance, and anti-infective manufacturing complexity, also remain underrepresented within mainstream curricula. Consequently graduates are put into the workforce without the required practical readiness for highly specialised roles. This results in longer onboarding cycles, operational inefficiencies and higher attrition, factors which only exacerbate an already limited talent pipeline.

The consequences of this talent crisis extend far beyond the pharmaceutical industry itself. As antimicrobial resistance continues to rise globally, the ability to sustain high-quality antibiotic manufacturing and maintain rigorous regulatory standards already requires specialised scientific and manufacturing talent. Developing future therapies and responding effectively to evolving infectious disease threats will further increase this dependency. In this context, AMR preparedness is no longer only a scientific challenge — it is also an industrial capability and healthcare resilience challenge.

While India has huge potential to become a global hub of AMR-resilient pharmaceutical innovation given its robust manufacturing base and growing scientific ecosystem, unlocking this will require an intentional shift in the industry’s approach to talent. The first step for improvement lies in enhancing the working relationships between academia and industry. Curricula need to transform to be informed by the realities of contemporary manufacturing and global regulations. There must also be a focus on scaling specialised skilling programmes to include microbiology, aseptic manufacturing and regulatory science. An equally key requirement is the establishment of structured leadership development pathways that will develop mid-career people to be future leaders in their industry.

The number of new antibiotics in the pipeline gets the headline. The number of people who can actually make, regulate, and steward those antibiotics at scale is the harder, slower number. India will be measured on the second one over the next decade.

(The author is President, Global Critical Care, Venus Remedies and CEO, Venus Medicine Research Centre. Views expressed are personal.)