- Title: Superbug review urges drug companies to "pay or play" on new antibiotics
- Date: 19th May 2016
- Summary: AMMAN, JORDAN (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PHARMACEUTICALS BEING PRODUCED
- Embargoed: 3rd June 2016 15:28
- Keywords: antibiotics superbug drugs pharmaceuticals antimicrobial resistance
- Location: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK / VARIOUS FILE LOCATIONS
- City: LONDON, ENGLAND, UK / VARIOUS FILE LOCATIONS
- Country: United Kingdom
- Topics: Health/Medicine
- Reuters ID: LVA0034IH59I3
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text:Drug companies should agree to "pay or play" in the urgent race to develop new antibiotics to tackle a global threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), according to a British government-commissioned review.
Led by former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O'Neill, the review said every sector affected by the growing threat of superbug infections - from patients, to doctors, to governments, to the healthcare industry - must be forced "out of its comfort zone" if the issue is to be successfully tackled.
"One of the things that was striking when I started this is that the scientific knowledge of the few that know about it is pretty strong; so how come nothing has changed? And the answer to that is people don't want to get out of their comfort zone. So, everybody's got to get out of their comfort zone - pharmaceutical companies, policy makers, the agricultural industry. And what we're proposing are things that are going to require people to get out of their comfort zone," O'Neill said after he presented a final report from his team's 18-month review.
This should include pharmaceutical companies, O'Neill said, which should be subject to a surcharge if they decide not to invest in research and development (R&D) to bring successful new antibiotic medicines to market.
For who do decide to "play", he said, a reward of between $1 billion and $1.5 billion should be paid for any successful new antimicrobial medicine brought to market.
"An idea that we call 'pay or play'; where the pharmaceutical industry itself collectively pays for the new drugs. But crucially, those that are personally responsible for the new successful drug actually get rewarded by the rest of the industry. And we think that has some very interesting characteristics that have appeal."
He repeated the review's previous estimation that AMR could kill an extra 10 million people a year and cost up to $100 trillion by 2050 if it is not brought under control.
"It is quite striking, and hence why one of our big recommendations is for a massive global awareness campaign, how few people are even aware that there is a problem called antimicrobial resistance," O'Neill added.
Any use of antibiotics promotes the development and spread of superbugs - multi-drug-resistant infections that evade the antimicrobial and antibiotic drugs designed to kill them.
"What we've done as a human species is to basically coat the world in antibiotics by our overuse and inappropriate use. So, we've selected for these resistance mechanisms in the bacteria, so it's why we're seeing the problem that we're seeing now," said Adam Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Microbial Diseases At University College London.
O'Neill was asked last year by Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron to conduct a full review of the problem and suggest ways to combat it.
Launching his final report, O'Neill said it had identified 10 areas where the world needs to take action. Some of these focus on how to reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics, while others look at how to increase the supply of new ones.
However, the drugs industry hit back at a proposal saying charging a levy would "undermine goodwill".
Trade associations representing British, European and international drug companies said in a joint statement that such a surcharge would be "punitive" and counter-productive.
The world has seen very few new antibiotics in the past few decades, as industry has retreated from the field to focus on more profitable disease areas, although recently there has been some increase in investment, prompted by the superbug threat. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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