2023: a pivotal year for innovation in antibiotic resistance?
Frédéric Peyrane, BEAM Alliance Coordinator
Florence Séjourné, Co-founder of BEAM Alliance and CEO of Aurobac Therapeutics
Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are driving innovation in antibiotic resistance, could start 2023 with their spirits dampened.
Many of them closed down in 2022, including in France, sometimes with products still in clinical development. These represent lost opportunities to offer patients and clinicians new solutions to tackle the rise in microbial resistance.
These failures are all the more frustrating given that medical needs continue to grow, as the ECDC points out in its latest report. [1]
These failures actually reflect a market failure that makes the therapeutic area of antibiotic resistance very unattractive in terms of investment. SMEs therefore struggle to raise the funds needed to develop their product portfolios. And when they do succeed, the amounts are so limited that the slightest technical or scientific barrier can prove insurmountable, and the slightest unforeseen event fatal.
However, SMEs continue to remain hopeful. Start-ups continue to emerge, including in France.
The reason? Public authorities now understand the nature of the problem and the associated challenges. And governments seem ready to take corrective action to revitalise innovation and enable us to anticipate the coming pandemic.
The United Kingdom kicked things off in 2019 by testing a new subscription-based economic model, and Sweden followed suit. The US Congress has been debating an ambitious bill along the same lines for some time now. Canada and Japan are also in the process of developing mechanisms best suited to their national constraints.
All these new economic mechanisms have one thing in common: they promote the appropriate use of antimicrobials by ensuring fair compensation for those who have taken the technical and financial risks of developing them.
And what about Europe? It is not being left behind! The European Commission has just published its proposal for a revision of pharmaceutical legislation that introduces an economic mechanism to encourage innovation. Other mechanisms, potentially complementary, are also being studied by the European Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Authority (HERA). France, which will have its say like every other Member State, can rely on the Strategic Sector Committee, assisted by the work of the Toulouse School of Economics developed within the ARPEGE project, to form an opinion.
The solution could therefore be within reach. A solution to restart the innovation machine and prolong the miracle brought about by antibiotics, where microbial infections remain a temporary and benign occurrence.
[1] European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC): Antimicrobial resistance in the EU/EEA (EARS-Net) – Annual epidemiological report for 2021 (disponible sur le site de l’ECDC)
Authors
Frédéric Peyrane
Coordinator BEAM Alliance
Florence Séjourné
Co-founder of BEAM Alliance and CEO of Aurobac Therapeutics