Incentives urged to spur antibiotic development

Novel drugs are needed to combat lethal, resistant and increasingly widespread infections, says an infectious disease group.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. March 20, 2006.

Washington -- As drug-resistant microbes continue to take a toll on even the youngest and healthiest members of the community, infectious diseases specialists warn that few new and effective antibiotics are in the works.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America released a hit list of six particularly worrisome microbes at a March 1 briefing during which they renewed a plea to Congress to pass legislation that would encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop new, innovative treatments.

Antimicrobials that go beyond the "me too" drugs are critically needed, the society noted. For instance, drug-resistant pneumonia is a reality even among young children, and it has become increasingly difficult to treat urinary tract and wound infections as they become resistant to more antibiotic classes, according to IDSA.

"In the past, it appeared we were keeping up with the emergence of resistance because the pharmaceutical industry was keeping up," said IDSA President Martin J. Blaser, MD, professor of internal medicine at New York University Medical Center. "But now, the discovery pipeline is drying up, and few new antibiotics are being developed," he said at the briefing.

Market forces are not likely to help, said George H. Talbot, MD, lead author of an article on the issue in the March 1 Clinical Infectious Diseases, also at the briefing. "It's much more profitable for a pharmaceutical company to make a cholesterol drug that you take for a lifetime than an antibiotic you take for a week."