As the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is
on the rise, the production of new antibiotics to combat these new resistant
strains is at an all time low. For the
past two decades the development of new antibiotics has dropped significantly
due to drug companies not making the same return on their investments in
antibiotics like they do with other drugs.
To compensate for this Sen. Richard Blumenthal is pushing for the
Generating Antibiotic Incentives Now (GAIN) Act, which is aimed at increasing
financial incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop new antibiotics
while streamlining the approval process for the drugs. The bill would give a 10-year exclusivity
period and it wants the FDA to develop a plan to speed up their approval
processes for new antibiotics without compromising safety or efficiency of the
drug.
Many pharmaceutical companies and people, such as
Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, Thomas Steiz, support the GAIN Act. The terminology for drug-resistant bacteria
has been changing steadily with the increases in infectious bacteria. At first there was multidrug-resistant (MDR)
infections, then extensively drug-resistant infections (XDR), and now
pandrug-resistant (PDR) infections. A
recent discovery of an enzyme called NDM-1 has been shown to cause resistant
bacteria to all antibiotics except for a few.
The situation is growing more urgent said Barry Eisenstein, senior vice
president of scientific affairs at Cubist Pharmaceuticals. Steven Gilman, vice president of research and
development of Cubist Pharmaceuticals compared the drug Dificid, an antibiotic
that treats the bacteria Clostridium difficile and cost $2,800 for 10 days of
treatment, to Provone, a drug to treat prostate cancer that cost 93,00. Gilman said it is this kind of gap that has
led companies to stop research and that financial incentives are greatly needed
to continue the development of antibiotics.
The GAIN Act, which will be voted on in May, has
many benefits for society in the long run.
If new antibiotics are not made to combat the infectious resistant
bacteria then we will be back at square one from a medical standpoint. With the availability of resources and the
advancement in technology there is no reason why new antibiotics should not be
produced. C. dificil, malaria, and tuberculosis
all have antibiotics that can prevent a person from getting the disease, but
with the increase in resistant strains of these bacteria they are causing an
increase in the amount of deaths world wide.
If nothing is done to prevent this increase then all of the hard work,
money, and countless time spent trying to fight these diseases will be
lost. Especially in poor countries where
improvements have been made over the past decade to help fight infections, the
goal to get rid of them in Africa by 2015 will be lost. Everyone knows that with a healthy society
more efforts can be placed on increasing the economy. If no effort is not put into research for new
antibiotics then disease will spread more rapidly and it will look like the
Middle Ages where everyone died young.
With todays advancements in medicine there is no reason for this and people
need to take action before the situation gets out of hand. Top leading researchers and doctors are
stressing the importance for the GAIN’s Act to go thru because they know the
devastating effects that these resistant bacteria could cause if nothing is
done to prevent it. These actions of
prevention are going to take international cooperation to stop the resistant
strains from spreading.
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