Antibiotic Revenues and Antibacterial Drug Discovery Research Are Declining
The loss of patent protection and a decline in revenues for a number of blockbuster brand name antibiotics has caused many big pharmaceutical companies to exit the antibacterial drug discovery market. The three remaining big pharma companies still actively engaged in antibacterial research are GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Novartis (all European owned companies).
A new report by UK-based Datamonitor entitled “Forecast Insight: Antibacterials” predicts that antibiotic sales revenues will decline from $19.6 billion in 2009 to about $16.4 billion in 2019. Not surprisingly, the report blames the projected decline on generic competition and the lack of new antibiotic launches over the past 10 years.
At present, the top seven antibiotic markets in the world include the US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. According to Datamonitor’s analyses, total sales in these markets have fallen by about 1.6 percent annually since 2005 and will continue to decline by almost 2.0 percent a year through 2019. In 2009, three antibiotics had sales of about or more than $1.0 billion; Johnson & Johnson’s Levaquin (market leader), and Pfizer’s Zosyn, and Zyvox. Interestingly, Pfizer recently decided to shut down its US-based antibacterial drug discovery program and move it to China and Johnson & Johnson recently announced that it was getting out of the antibiotic discovery business.
Big pharma’s decision to abandon antibiotic research could not have come at a worse time. The incidence of antibiotic resistance among both Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria is rising at unprecedented rates. And while safe and effective treatments for Gram positive infections including MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) still exist, the number of treatment options to treat Gram negative infections caused by Acinetobacter spp, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and enteric bacteria is severely limited. The recent description and rapid spread of a beta-lactamase enzyme called NDM-1 that inactivates the antibiotic carbapenem—the last safe and effective antibiotic to universally treat infections caused by Gram negative bacteria —is extremely troubling and worrisome.
While much of the focus over the last decade was on MRSA, infections caused by untreatable, multiple drug resistant Gram negative bacteria will pose the greatest public health threat over the next 10 years. Unfortunately, it is much harder to develop new antibiotic treatments for Gram negative infections as compared with ones caused by Gram positive bacteria. Further, at present, most of the companies that remain in the antibiotic space continue to focus on new treatment for MRSA and related bacteria. Consequently, new treatments for Gram negative infections may be more than a decade away!
Finally, like MRSA, most infections caused by multiple drug resistant Gram negative bacteria are nosocomial in nature (although the incidence of community acquired infections is also on the rise). This means that the most likely place to become infected with these bacteria is institutionalized healthcare settings including hospitals and nursing homes.
In the past, we have relied on pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to discover new antibiotic treatments. The decision of many of these companies to leave the antibacterial space for purely financial reasons is unfortunate and regrettable. However, the growing incidence of antibiotic resistance among both Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria suggests that new antibiotics are necessary and that alternate approaches to new antibiotic drug discovery must be implemented. Whether this is through public/private partnerships or strictly through government programs is irrelevant. The bottom line is that we need new antibiotics; and if they are not discovered soon, many patients will die from previously treatable bacterial infections!
Until next time...
Good Luck and Good Job Hunting (start an antibiotic drug discovery company)
Most major pharmaceutical companies left Brazil about 30 years ago. However, much has changed in the country over the past 30 years and most western pharmaceutical companies are rushing back into Brazil to expand their operations and make acquisitions. At the same time, many Brazilian drug makers are beginning to consolidate and spread abroad.
The loss of over 200,000 pharmaceutical jobs over the past three years has been mainly driven by the anticipated loss of revenue from blockbuster drugs that will lose patent protection by 2013. While drug makers frequently cite blockbuster patent expiry as the reason for the need to downsize, they rarely provide the business and economic metrics, numbers and statistics that have influenced their decisions.
Today's New York Times reported that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued warning letters and ordered 14 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to stop running what it calls misleading ads on internet search pages displayed by search engines like Google. The agency faulted the companies for failing to identify product names (brand) and not listing potential side effects (only benefits) for the drugs. In other words, the ads lacked “fair balance” something that FDA stresses and that all drug makers are very familiar with. 
