from the or-it-will-cost-us-$100-trillion dept
A couple of years ago we wrote about how the patent system creates perverse incentives for companies that make antibiotics to exploit them as fully as possible while they are still under patent. That, in its turn, drives antibiotic resistance, which is becoming an extremely serious problem. At the end of our previous post, we noted that this situation would be a perfect opportunity to try something different, such as offering some form of prize to pharmaceutical companies that come up with new antibiotics. Remarkably, the UK government's Review on Antimicrobial Resistance (pdf) has just suggested exactly that:
we want to make antibiotics R&D commercially sustainable so that the field can attract the best minds from research organisations, small biotech companies, large firms or not-for-profit entities. To do that we propose a system by which a global organisation has the authority and resources to commit lump-sum payments to successful drug developers. Payment would have to be set against selective criteria agreed in advance. Such an approach would 'de-link' the profitability of a drug from its volume of sales, supporting conservation goals by eliminating the commercial imperative for a drug company to sell new antibiotics in large quantities -- a key factor in contributing to the development and spread of resistance.
As that notes, the key to this approach is to "de-link" profitability from sales volume so there is no business pressure to over-use new antibiotics. One way to do that is to offer not a patent, but a hefty lump sum to any company that comes up with a new antibiotic. Another benefit is that the scale of the money on offer -- around $2 billion per new antibiotic -- is likely to encourage participation from companies all around the world, especially startups, since the scheme would be open to all. The UK review suggests supporting innovative approaches directly:
A global AMR [antimicrobial resistance] Innovation Fund of around 2 billion USD over 5 years would help boost funding for blue-sky research into drugs and diagnostics, and get more good ideas off the ground. Big pharma should have a role in paying for this innovation fund: it needs to look beyond short-term assessments of profit and loss, and act with ‘enlightened self-interest’ in tackling AMR, recognising that it has a long term commercial imperative to having effective antibiotics, as well as a moral one.
The 44-page document goes into more detail about the thinking behind the proposed scheme, how it might be implemented in practice, and the problems it would face. It's a bold approach, but given the continuing failure of the current patent-based system to come up with new antibiotics, it's one that governments around the world need to consider seriously. After all, as the review warns:
if we fail to act on AMR, then an additional 10 million lives would be lost each year to drug-resistant strains of malaria, HIV, TB, and certain bacterial infections by 2050, at a cost to the world economy of 100 trillion USD.
Compared to that figure, the few tens of billions of dollars needed to implement the new approach has to be a bargain.
Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+
Filed Under: antibiotics, competition, drugs, health, patents, pharmaceuticals, prizes, profits, safety, uk
