London: Drugmakers are renewing efforts to develop medicines to fight emerging antibiotic-resistant bacteria, but creating new classes of drugs on the scale needed is unlikely to happen without new financial incentives to make the effort worth the investment, companies and industry experts said.
American military researchers announced the first US case of a patient with an infection found to be resistant to the antibiotic colistin, the drug often held in reserve for when all else fails.
That put a spotlight on the urgent need for new medicines that can combat what health officials have called ‘nightmare bacteria.’ Drugmakers acknowledged that in the absence of a new way of compensating them, it simply does not make economic sense to pour serious resources into work on new antibiotics.
“The return on investment based on the current commercial model is not really commensurate with the amount of effort you have to put into it,” said David Payne, who heads GlaxoSmithKline PLC's (GSK.L) antibiotics drug group.
Other pharmaceutical companies expressed a similar sentiment.
In January, some 80 drugmakers and diagnostics companies, including Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), Merck & Co (MRK.N), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and Glaxo, signed a declaration calling for cooperation among governments to create incentives to revitalise research and development of new antibiotics.
It proposed a new business model in which profit would not be linked to higher sales. For example, governments could offer lump-sum rewards for development of a successful new antibiotic. A British government panel suggested this month that drug companies be offered up to $1.5 billion for successful development of a new antibiotic.
In the US alone, antibiotic-resistant bacteria causes 2 million serious infections and 23,000 deaths annually, according to U.S. health officials. Unrestrained overuse of current antibiotics by doctors and hospitals, often when they are not needed, and widespread antibiotic use in food livestock have contributed to the evolution of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
But in recent years, major drugmakers have poured most of their research dollars into highly profitable medicines to fight cancer, rare diseases and hepatitis C.
These drugs not only command high prices, they also are typically used far longer than antibiotics. “Drug companies can’t make an economic case for investing in superbug drugs,” said Erik Gordon, a professor.
"Based on that, we're predicting it would work against infections that could be caused by bacteria that are resistant to available antibiotics," Payne said.
Other companies with late-stage studies underway for antibiotics include: Cempra Inc (CEMP.O), whose drug was recently validated in a Japanese trial; Medicines Co (MDCO.O); and Paratek Pharmaceuticals Inc (PRTK.O). J&J is also putting money into battling antibiotic resistance.
"If there is a bright side, it is that the world policymakers and health leaders have focused on this issue like never before," Coukell said. "But we've got a long way to go."
