EU countries should pool funding to create 'prize' for bringing new antibiotics to market, report says

"European policy makers were urged Wednesday to find viable financial incentives to get drug companies to discover new antibiotics, because the lack of fresh supplies poses acute dangers to health care and efforts against infectious diseases," according to a report by the Office of Health Economics and funded by GlaxoSmithKline, Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal reports.

"The OHE report offered two different recommendations at the European level on how future antibiotics should be rewarded. The first is a hybrid approach whereby EU regulatory authorities would provide an accelerated review for new antibiotics, and whereby EU member states would ensure that prices paid drug makers reflect the growing cost of antibiotic resistance," the news agency writes. The second recommendation is for the development of "a so-called Advanced Market Commitment 'prize,'" which would be awarded upon a new antibiotic's registration, or a patent extension, according to Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal (Stovall, 7/5).

The report downplayed the role of publicly financed "push" incentives, saying that drug companies should be responsible for the cost of development, the Financial Times reports. "Ideally, [the report] adds, the U.S. and the EU should jointly fund a prize for new antibiotics at point of launch, sharing the costs while also co-ordinating their different regulatory and clinical trial requirements to ease approval," the newspaper writes (Jack, 7/7).