Maybe Covid-19 will save the antibiotics business
The novel coronavirus outbreak has galvanized an unprecedented response from the drug industry, with countries around the world working to develop therapies and vaccines that might halt a global crisis. And all that work underlines a longstanding problem: Society doesn’t have enough treatments for infectious diseases.
The issue is well-understood. Making money on anti-infective products, especially antibiotics, is exceedingly difficult, and thus companies see little incentive to invent them. Repeat that over a few decades and the U.S.’s anti-infective medicine chest is alarmingly bare.
It’s still early to be talking about lessons of the pandemic, but one of the “silver linings” could be a renewed focus on fixing that system, said Alexander Hardy, CEO of Genentech.
“This topic of anti-infectives and the broken business model is going to be something I think we’ll come out of this with a determination to tackle, because it’s gone on too long,” Hardy said in a panel discussion hosted by PhRMA yesterday. Stephen Ubl, CEO of the lobbying group, said there’s a bipartisan congressional effort to address the issue that could move forward this year.
The issue is well-understood. Making money on anti-infective products, especially antibiotics, is exceedingly difficult, and thus companies see little incentive to invent them. Repeat that over a few decades and the U.S.’s anti-infective medicine chest is alarmingly bare.
It’s still early to be talking about lessons of the pandemic, but one of the “silver linings” could be a renewed focus on fixing that system, said Alexander Hardy, CEO of Genentech.
“This topic of anti-infectives and the broken business model is going to be something I think we’ll come out of this with a determination to tackle, because it’s gone on too long,” Hardy said in a panel discussion hosted by PhRMA yesterday. Stephen Ubl, CEO of the lobbying group, said there’s a bipartisan congressional effort to address the issue that could move forward this year.
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