Big
Pharma Abandons Antibiotics: An Opening For Small Biotech. That’s true!
Very interesting and logical article providing some fresh numbers:
There are now over one hundred antibiotic
drugs on the market, and experts have been warning us for years that
antibiotics are being overprescribed and overused. Doctors sometimes
accommodate demanding patients by prescribing antibiotics for conditions that
the drugs have no ability to impact - such as colds (which are caused by
viruses) and fungal infections. Even worse, an estimated seventy percent of the
antibiotics used in the U.S. are fed to livestock for non-therapeutic uses,
primarily to keep animals that are raised in unnatural conditions alive and
healthy looking until they go to slaughter. Those antibiotics are then passed
on to you when you eat meat from the animals that consumed the drugs or
vegetables fertilized with their manure.
It was an
introduction to the problem. The following passages describe the seriousness of
the problem.
Over time, individual antibiotics become
ineffective in treating diseases they were once able to cure. Dr. Kenneth Todar
estimates that "about 70 percent of the bacteria that cause infections in
hospitals are resistant to at least one of the drugs most commonly used for
treatment" and some are impervious to all the antibacterial drugs approved
for use. The list of antibiotic-resistant bacteria includes strains of anthrax,
gonorrhea, Group B streptococcus, some forms of tuberculosis, typhoid fever,
and Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). In his newsletter, Dr.
Joseph Mercola reports that more people die from antibiotic-resistant infections
every year than from AIDS. He writes that antibiotics "literally are
becoming increasingly ineffective with each passing day."
People are dying from infections that were
once treatable, and experts in the pathology of contagion express fears that
human populations may once again be decimated by pandemics. Globally, the
second leading cause of death is bacterial and parasitic disease. There's a
real need for new and more effective antibiotics. Big Pharma is not meeting
that need.
And here is
prove of the theorem that Big Pharma is simply being less interested in the
antibiotics market:
In recent years, the major pharmaceutical
companies have been getting out of the antibacterial business. There were 36
companies in the U.S. and Europe that produced antibiotics in 1980. That number
dwindled to no more than seven large companies by 2010. Companies that have closed
their antibacterial-development departments include Roche (RHHBY.PK) in 1999
and Pfizer (PFE) in 2011.
Why the rush to abandon pharmaceuticals
that were once considered miracle drugs and are still essential to the practice
of medicine? The short answer is that antibiotics are simply not as profitable
as many other drugs. In part, that's because the course of treatment tends to
be short - usually about 10 to 14 days. Compare that with a blockbuster drug
like Lipitor, which an average patient may take for many years, and it's easy
to see which is more profitable. Every antibiotic faces the additional handicap
that the bacteria it is designed to eliminate will one day likely become
resistant to its effects. If and when that happens, the drug is discontinued -
and it stops generating earnings for the company that developed it.
Drug companies face the same increasing
research-and-development costs and regulatory hurdles with antibiotics as they
do with other drugs. It can cost more than $800 million and take about 15 years
to develop and get approvals for a new antibiotic. For about the same
investment of capital and time, a big pharmaceutical company has a choice: try
to develop the next Lipitor or a blockbuster antibacterial drug. Lipitor
generated worldwide sales for Pfizer of $10.7 billion in 2010. A blockbuster
antibiotic typically has annual sales of about $1 billion. In 2001, there were
six blockbuster antibiotics. By 2008, there were only two. So it's not
surprising that fewer and fewer antibiotics are being developed in favor of
drugs with the possibility of a greater ROI. The shift away from antibiotic
development can be seen in these numbers: in the 1980s, 29 antibiotics received
FDA approval; in the 10 years beginning in 2000, that number dropped to nine.
And very
logical conclusion:
Small biotech firms are taking advantage of
government incentives to encourage antibiotic development. These incentives
include R-and-D funding (such as the contract Trius has the NIAID) and faster
approval from the FDA. An anti-infective drug is more likely to receive
approval at any phase of development than almost any other type of drug. To
offset the typically lower returns expected from antibiotics, companies are
using premium pricing for the drugs they are bringing to market.
There is no indication that the market for
new antibiotics will soften. Small biotech firms are taking the lead in
developing the products that are needed to treat bacterial infections.
The
message: every train has its own passengers, when someone loses – another finds!
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