The Antibiotic Gap: It's All of the Above

Here's a business-section column at the New York Times on the problem of antibiotic drug discovery. To those of us following the industry, the problems of antibiotic drug discovery are big pieces of furniture that we've lived with all our lives; we hardly even notice if we bump into them again. You'd think that readers of the Times or other such outlets would have come across the topic a few times before, too, but there must always be a group for which it's new, no matter how many books and newspaper articles and magazine covers and TV segments are done on it. It's certainly important enough - there's no doubt that we really are going to be in big trouble if we don't keep up the arms race against the bacteria. This piece takes the tack of "If drug discovery is actually doing OK, where are the new antibiotics?" Here's a key section: Antibiotics face a daunting proposition. They are not only becoming more difficult to develop, but they are also not obviously profitable. Unlike, say, cancer drugs, which can be spectacularly expensive and may need to be taken for life, antibiotics do not command top dollar from hospitals. What’s more, they tend to be prescribed for only short periods of time. Importantly, any new breakthrough antibiotic is likely to be jealously guarded by doctors and health officials for as long as possible, and used only as a drug of last resort to prevent bacteria from developing resistance. By the time it became a mass-market drug, companies fear, it cou...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Infectious Diseases Source Type: blogs