UK to roll out drugs from Pfizer, Shionogi to fight superbugs

Bloomberg: England is rolling out a pair of antibiotics from Pfizer Inc. and Shionogi & Co. as part of a pioneering program aimed at stimulating a broken market and taking on the rising threat of superbugs.

Under the deal announced by the National Health Service, the drug companies will receive a fixed annual fee for their antibiotics. The payments in the program, the first of its kind, will be as much as £10 million ($12 million) a year for up to 10 years.

About 1,700 patients a year with severe bacterial infections will be eligible for the drugs. With germs becoming increasingly resistant to current antibiotics, the NHS said the drugs will provide a lifeline to patients with life-threatening infections like sepsis or hospital or ventilator pneumonia.

It’s hoped the new model will protect the drugs’ longevity and provide an incentive for pharmaceutical companies to create more new antibiotics.

“Innovation in antibiotics has been limited,” NHS Chief Executive Amanda Pritchard said in the statement. This effort “aims to turn the tide by working with pharmaceutical firms to make sure we have these superbug-battling drugs ready and available.”

Still, with the UK accounting for just 3% of the world market for antibiotics, more governments will need to make similar commitments to give companies enough incentive to develop a new drug. Globally, such an effort would likely cost more than $3 billion over a decade, according to CARB-X, a nonprofit.