RE: Discuva on twitter17 Jan 2018 10:25
I am afraid that is wishful tinking at this time Mr Mac.Big Pharma has basically given up on antibiotics. It�s not that the risks are too high, it is that the rewards are too low. New antibiotics are being introduced, but their sales are a tiny fraction of sales in other drug classes.
If you were to present the FDA with a novel antibiotic that is effective against all multi-drug resistant organisms currently known, the FDA�for excellent reasons�would want to approve it only for the narrow indication of third-line treatment of multi-drug resistant infections. In this way, it would remain useful longest, but this can not work and is commericially unattractive.. Long before the patent protection had expired, a pirate company (historic precedent suggests in India) would be producing it, and selling it, and�inevitably, it seems�a resistant infection would defeat it long before you made back the huge costs of R&D.
There needs to be a complete structural change in approach and whilst Governmenet incentives of various kinds are being introduced they have yet to gain meaningful traction on a scale to defeat what is unquestinably a huge and dangerous problem facing mankind.