There is no market for new antibiotics: this allows an open approach to research and development

Klug, Dana M., Idiris, Fahima I. M., Blaskovich, Mark A. T., von Delft, Frank, Dowson, Christopher G., Kirchhelle, Claas, Roberts, Adam ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0760-3088, Singer, Andrew C. and Todd, Matthew H. (2021) 'There is no market for new antibiotics: this allows an open approach to research and development'. Wellcome Open Research, Vol 6, p. 146.

Preview

Text 354c28b9-6dba-474f-b4ec-f115274155ae_16847_-_matthew_h._todd.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (654kB) | Preview

Abstract

There is an increasingly urgent need for new antibiotics, yet there is a significant and persistent economic problem when it comes to developing such medicines. The problem stems from the perceived need for a “market” to drive commercial antibiotic development. In this article, we explore abandoning the market as a prerequisite for successful antibiotic research and development. Once one stops trying to fix a market model that has stopped functioning, one is free to carry out research and development (R&D) in ways that are more openly collaborative, a mechanism that has been demonstrably effective for the R&D underpinning the response to the COVID pandemic. New “open source” research models have great potential for the development of medicines for areas of public health where the traditional profit-driven model struggles to deliver. New financial initiatives, including major push/pull incentives, aimed at fixing the broken antibiotics market provide one possible means for funding an openly collaborative approach to drug development. We argue that now is therefore the time to evaluate, at scale, whether such methods can deliver new medicines through to patients, in a timely manner.

Item Type:	Article
Subjects:	QV Pharmacology > Anti-Bacterial Agents. Tissue Extracts > QV 350 Anti-bacterial agents (General or not elsewhere classified) QW Microbiology and Immunology > QW 45 Microbial drug resistance. General or not elsewhere classified. WB Practice of Medicine > Therapeutics > WB 330 Drug therapy
Faculty: Department:	Biological Sciences > Department of Tropical Disease Biology
Digital Object Identifer (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.16847.1
Depositing User:	Cathy Waldron
Date Deposited:	08 Jul 2021 10:53
Last Modified:	08 Jul 2021 10:53
URI:	https://archive.lstmed.ac.uk/id/eprint/18280

Statistics

View details

Actions (login required)

Edit Item