Leaving Antibiotics: An Interview

Here's the (edited) transcript of an interview that Pfizer's VP of clinical research, Charles Knirsch, gave to PBS's Frontline program. The subject was the rise of resistant bacteria - which is a therapeutic area that Pfizer is no longer active in. And that's the subject of the interview, or one of its main subjects. I get the impression that the interviewer would very much like to tell a story about how big companies walked away to let people die because they couldn't make enough money off of them: . . .If you look at the course of a therapeutic to treat pneumonia, OK, … we make something, a macrolide, that does that. It’s now generic, and probably the whole course of therapy could cost $30 or $35. Even when it was a branded antibiotic, it may have been a little bit more than that. So to cure pneumonia, which in some patient populations, particularly the elderly, has a high mortality, that’s what people are willing to pay for a therapeutic. I think that there are differences across different therapeutic areas, but for some reason, with antibacterials in particular, I think that society doesn’t realize the true value. And did it become incumbent upon you at some point to make choices about which things would be in your portfolio based on this? Based on our scientific capabilities and the prudent allocation of capital, we do make these choices across the whole portfolio, not just with antibacterials. But talk to me about the decision that went into antibacterials...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Infectious Diseases Source Type: blogs