Last checked at 
* Antimicrobial resistance discussed at recent G7 summit
* Cameron warns of return to "dark ages" in medicine
* Economist Jim O'Neill to head new antibiotics panel
* Move welcomed by World Health Organisation head (Updates with details on timing of review, WHO reaction)
By Ben Hirschler
LONDON, July 2 (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameroncalled on Wednesday for global action to tackle the threat ofdrug-resistant superbugs and said Britain planned to take aleading role in finding ways to spur the development of newantibiotics.
A world without effective antibiotics would push medicineback into the "dark ages", he said, with routine surgery,treatments for cancer and organ transplants potentially becomingimpossible.
Cameron announced an independent review led by formerGoldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill to pinpoint theproblems and identify why so few new antibiotics are beingdeveloped.
O'Neill, who described the job as "a very excitingchallenge", will bring together experts from around the world,reflecting the global nature of the superbug threat.
Cameron said he had discussed the issue at a G7 summit ofleaders in Brussels last month and won specific support for theinitiative from U.S. President Barack Obama and GermanChancellor Angela Merkel.
"If we fail to act, we are looking at an almost unthinkablescenario where antibiotics no longer work and we are cast backinto the dark ages of medicine where treatable infections andinjuries will kill once again," he said in a statement.
"With some 25,000 people a year already dying frominfections resistant to antibiotic drugs in Europe alone, thisis not some distant threat but something happening right now."
The O'Neill Commission will set out a plan for encouragingand accelerating antibiotic development, looking into ways topay drugmakers for producing antibiotics even if they are rarelyused. It is due to present its initial findings in 2015, with afinal report a year later.
It is being hosted and funded by the Wellcome Trust charityin London, which is contributing 500,000 pounds ($850,000) tothe project.
The initiative is the latest example of Cameron givingBritain a leadership role in global health - a strategy thatdovetails with his government's desire to make the country a hubfor medical and life science research. Last December, Cameronheld a global summit in London on dementia.
RACE AGAINST EVOLUTION
Drug resistance is driven by the misuse and overuse ofantibiotics, which encourages bacteria to develop new ways ofovercoming them.
Resistance has been a feature of medicine since AlexanderFleming's discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin, inBritain in 1928. But the problem has become worse in recentyears as multi-drug-resistant bugs have developed and drugcompanies have reduced investment in an unprofitable field.
Unlike big sellers such as statins for lowering cholesterol,antibiotics are used for only short periods and doctors alsotend to keep the newest and most potent ones in reserve.
Prices for antibiotics are also low, reflecting theavailability of many cheap generic versions, in contrast totreatments for other diseases such as cancer.
Recent years have seen the emergence of strains ofinfections, including tuberculosis, malaria, pneumonia andgonorrhoea, that resist all known drugs.
Only a handful of new antibiotics have been developed andbrought to market in the past few decades, and it is a raceagainst time to find more as bacterial infections increasinglyevolve into superbugs resistant to even the most powerfullast-resort medicines reserved for extreme cases.
One of the best known superbugs, MRSA, is alone responsiblefor tens of thousands of deaths in the United States and Europe,as well as untold numbers in poorer countries.
Cameron's decision to set up the O'Neill Commission followsa call by scientists in May for a independent body onantimicrobial resistance, modelled on the IntergovernmentalPanel on Climate Change.
The commission was welcomed by Margaret Chan, directorgeneral of the World Health Organisation, which is developing aparallel global action plan on antimicrobial resistance.
In one promising sign, Swiss drugmaker Roche recently said it was returning to the antibiotic field - but itsmove runs counter to a gradual drift to the exit by Big Pharmaover the past decade.
Only a handful of pharmaceutical firms with large antibioticR&D programmes remain, compared with nearly 20 in 1990,according to the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
One of those still in the game is GlaxoSmithKline,which said new economic models were needed to encourageinvestment. ($1 = 0.5877 British Pounds) (Editing by Mark Potter and Sonya Hepinstall)
