The problem behind the antimicrobial industry

The silent pandemic threat is now well known in the field of infectious disease, but yet still few new antimicrobials are coming on the market. Even if a recent study showed that in 2019, 1,2 Million death was due to resistant bacterial infections and thus more death was attributed to bacterial infection than HIV or Malaria.

Then why the industry is not pushing to the market more antimicrobial drugs?

Antimicrobial drug executives report that the market is not attractive in terms of sales due to different variables. Governments tried to build attractive incentives by extending protection from generic competitors but that wasn’t a significant success. Policies makers claim that the regulation rewards drug makers for triumphing approval of treatments that are not better than present options, giving medical doctors little cause using them and thus giving little traction to these types of medicines.

In solution to those complaints, governments are looking to resolve the hassle via way of means of guaranteeing "subscription-style" contracts for brand-new antibiotics if they may be capable of dealing with drug-resistant infections, represent a new drug kind, or in any other case enhance on current treatments

Pharma and biotech are not pushing, but what if governments were pulling?

The promise of a guaranteed government contract is a start, but the solution stands in the contribution of most governments in the targeted markets. National funds to guarantee access to the market to drug developers such as the Cures 2.0 in the US is a path where the market could be more appealing.

If governments create funds for antibiotic purchases and layout a plan for comparing what forms of infectious diseases need new remedies and the standards new antibiotics would need to meet in order to qualify, then companies would have a clear path to meet success in antimicrobial drugs and in terms of revenues.

Let’s take a practical example, if small biotech has a potential technology that might meet governments guidelines. In order to enter lead optimization and development it will take 10 years plus, so without clear long-term visibility on the reward and sales, the company won’t risk the investment. But if the company has a clear path to get the drug on the market and the government’s fund and insurance policies are helping to pull the drug on the market, then the biotech company will have sufficient demand-pull to get in the investment. 

A great article pushing late 2021 try to estimate The Appropriate Size Of Global Pull Incentives For Antibacterial Medicines