Mike Allen has four decades of UK and Global pharmaceutical industry experience in antibiotics, antimicrobial resistance, and infectious diseases. Mike started his career as a clinical pharmacologist working with the Pain & Opiate Research Group at the Nuffield Department of Anaesthetics in Oxford from 1979 to 1986. Following appointments in Lederle Laboratories (which later became Wyeth Pharmaceuticals), Novartis Pharmaceuticals and Cubist, Mike currently works as the Regional Medical Advisor (Antibiotics, QMR & Vaccines) at MSD Ltd UK, with medical responsibilities for MSD’s broad portfolio of licensed antibiotics and pipeline molecules.
Throughout his career in the pharmaceutical industry, he has worked collaboratively with the medical, commercial, policy, and development teams at national, European, and global levels, including coordinating a highly successful international antibiotic registry and multiple clinical and in vitro antibiotic studies. Mike was elected to his first 3-year term as General Secretary of the British Society of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy (BSAC) in 2022 and re-elected in 2025 for a second term. Mike has been an Ordinary Member of the BSAC Council since 2018, having previously served as an Ordinary Member from 2012 to 2015. He was a member of the BSAC Resistance Surveillance Project (BSAC RSP) Steering Committee and, latterly, the BSAC RSP Legacy Working Group throughout the project’s duration from 2000 to 2025.
Mike has co-authored more than 50 publications with leading researchers in the UK and internationally, focusing particularly on antibiotic resistance surveillance and the association between antibiotic use and infections caused by clinically significant pathogens, including Clostridium difficile, glycopeptide-resistant enterococci, MRSA, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and ESBL-producing Enterobacterales.