New antibiotics needed to deal with resistant bacteria

As antibiotic resistance becomes a formidable adversary in the hospital and community settings, the development and manufacturing of new drugs are essential, according to a speaker at the 15th Richard J. Duma/National Foundation for Infectious Diseases Annual News Conference and Symposium on Infectious Diseases.

“The problem of resistance is one we’ve always had, and it came with the introduction of penicillin in the 1940s,” said John G. Bartlett, MD, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. “But we always kept up with it, by the pharmaceutical companies developing new drugs as resistance came along.”

The problem now is that the number of new antibiotics being produced per year has declined. “The pipeline has pretty much dried up,” Bartlett said. “We’re just not getting the new antibiotics that bailed us out in years past.”

A report from the European CDC also indicated that the problem of resistance is not unique to the United States. The agency encountered a similar issue of finding no new drugs in development when searching for ways to treat resistant gram-negative bacteria. Bartlett said he hopes that antibiotic resistance is now being recognized as a global dilemma and will in turn receive a global response.

Cost is a major player in the pharmaceutical companies’ decision not to pursue development of new antibiotics, according to Bartlett. The ability to recover the estimated $1 billion needed to produce a novel drug is extremely low, especially with antibiotics only being used in 1- to 2-week courses, and pharmaceutical companies now often focus their attention on long-term treatments, such as Lipitor.

The industry’s involvement is crucial to beating resistance, Bartlett said, adding that when discussing congressional involvement, providing certain incentives such as tax breaks may encourage pharmaceutical companies to resume work on new antibiotics.

He said the problem is now receiving sufficient emphasis, with various agencies and organizations recognizing the need to move forward with a coordinated effort.

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