SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The problems of developing new antibiotics is that it is a never ending technology race.
New drugs are targeted at those areas where there are a sufficient number of patients to (eventually) pay for the cost of development. Only when existing drugs no longer are effective (due to resistant strains of infectious agents), will doctors prescribe newer more expensive drugs. Some antibiotics and antivirals will end up being niche drugs, for those with special needs.
These situations can lead to an inability to recover developmental costs before the patent expires
This means, the developers are tempted to keep the prices very high. Unfortunately, this discourages use and doctors refuse to prescribe the drug. Some drug companies launch a massive advertising campaign to pump up sales before the patents can expire. This encourages over use, which detracts from the useful life of the drugs.
Too many drug companies therefore, have started shying away from expensive development on a drug that will never make money for them.
ScienceMag features a story on a UK Government proposal for a global government administered program that would guarantee drug developers a profit, rather than extending patent length.
The new report full text pdf here estimates that the world needs 15 new antibiotics per decade, at least four of which should have new mechanisms of action to target the most harmful pathogens.
Toward that end the UK plan would create a $2 billion "global innovation fund," bankrolled by pharmaceutical companies to kick-start development of promising drug studies.
To incentivize drug development without encouraging overuse, the report promotes an idea gaining popularity in antibiotics: "de-linking" a drugmaker's profits from the drug's sales. Such strategies aim to give companies assurance that they will make money if they bring valuable new antibiotics to market, regardless of the number of pills prescribed right away.
- They propose a system by which a global organisation has the authority and resources to commit lump-sum payments to successful drug developers, irrespective of current sales.
- Secondly, they would also jump-start a new innovation cycle in antibiotics by getting more money into early stage research by boosting funding for blue-sky research into drugs and diagnostics.
- Finally they propose to further reduce barriers to drug development by lowering costs, improving the efficiency of research, and lowering global regulatory barriers wherever possible without compromising patients' safety.
They suggest that a comprehensive package of interventions could cost as little 16 billion USD and no more than 37 billion USD over the course of 10 years and would be sufficient to radically overhaul the antibiotics pipeline.
Presumably such a program would come with some requirement to keep prices low, or require them to license others to manufacture the drugs at reasonable royalty rates well before the patents expire.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by jimbrooking on Friday May 15 2015, @10:08AM
Paying farmers the difference between market and some price floor, and later, paying farmers not to farm, leading many to take up non-farming for fun and profit. And hasn't that worked out well!?
Better if the US government or the EU or some competent non-profit foundation (Gates? RWJF? Wellcome?) acquire (purchase) a small but successful drug development company, turn it into a quasi-public corporation and set about finding those 10 antibiotics/year without regard for their profitability. And possibly incorporate the approval process into the development process so that when the final "Phase II" human trials are complete (safe, effective, dosages determined, efficacy standards and all the rest), the approval is automatically given. Then license the production to anyone for a nominal fee.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday May 15 2015, @03:59PM
The problem with this great idea is that the existing companies would sue/FUD/poach against this competitor. They have lots of money to do that.
The only way this could work would be to set it up in another country and call it a Strategic Resource, to protect it from predatory practices. Then Americans would be able to travel to said country to get treatment (can't import drugs, even from Canada).
(Score: 2) by tathra on Friday May 15 2015, @04:14PM
something like that. there are certain things that should never be done for profit (like basic healthcare, where people's lives literally hang in the balance) and things that can't be done for a profit, like general space exploration (building telescopes, sending probes to other planets, etc); things that can't or shouldn't be done for a profit are things that are supposed to be handled by government. since antibiotic development is so critical, and since profits are already difficult to acquire during the patent length, that means this is something that should fall to government. either mandate that pharmaceutical companies dedicate team to antibiotic development, with all development costs covered by public funds, or have the government set up a branch dedicated to developing antibiotics (and vaccines if possible); anything else is just plain fucking retarded.
are we really so broken as a society that guaranteeing profits for unprofitable things is the only way we can think to accomplish them? thats the kind of shit you report to the inspector general [opm.gov] as waste, fraud, and abuse.