In last month’s Investor Presentation, discovery of novel antimicrobials which penetrate bacterial cells was nominated as an area in which Phylogica anticipated further pharma deals. There is growing evidence that this expectation is not without foundation.
It’s well known that pharma has for years neglected the area of antibiotic research, reluctant to invest because of the comparatively low returns. The resulting lack of new antibiotics has contributed to the rise of drug resistant superbugs and the issue is now ringing alarm bells at government level.
In March this year, Britain's top health official warned that antimicrobial resistance posed a "catastrophic threat to medicine and could mean patients having minor surgery risk dying from infections that can no longer be treated."(1) Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has also spoken out, calling for an urgent fight-back against "nightmare bacteria". In September the CDC announced that it would now categorize drug-resistant superbugs by threat level, ranking the worst drug-resistant bacteria according to how many people get sick, the number of hospitalizations and the number of deaths caused by each. Also taken into account would be how many, if any, existing antibiotics still worked on the bacteria. (2) The threat is not restricted to the US and Britain. The World Health Organization now ranks antimicrobial resistance as one of the top three health threats to the world in this century.(1)
It is estimated that more than 2 million people get antibiotic-resistant infections each year in the United States and that at least 23,000 subsequently die.(2) Drug resistant superbugs in the US are said to be responsible for 8 million days spent in hospitals, $20 billion a year in excess U.S. health care costs and $35 billion in lost wages and other societal costs.(3) In the European Union, there are an estimated 25,000 deaths annually due to antimicrobial resistance.(4)
Deals signed in the past six months suggest a growing willingness by both government and pharma to invest in solutions to the escalating problem.
In May, the U.S. government took action by signing an antibiotics development deal worth up to $200 million with GlaxoSmithKline to tackle the threat of both drug resistance and bioterrorism. The collaboration between GSK and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will study potential new drugs to treat conventional pathogens and those that could be developed into weapons. (5)
Then in late July, Cubist Pharmaceuticals announced the acquisition of both Trius Therapeutics and Optimer Pharmaceuticals. The deals, worth up to $1.62 billion, gave Cubist access to several early and late stage antibiotic candidates to fight resistant infections. CEO Michael Bonney said that if all products were approved, Cubist might provide four of the 10 new antibiotics the Infectious Diseases Society of America has said the world will need by 2020 (6,7,8)
Early this month, Astra Zaneca signed a joint research collaboration agreement with two units under Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research to develop new drugs to treat Gram-negative bacterial infections (9)
Finally, also this month, Roche announced that it will pay up to $548 million in an exclusive global licensing deal to develop and commercialise Swiss biotech Polyphor's investigational antibiotic POL7080 against certain superbug infections found in hospitals. Roche said that POL7080 had demonstrated clinical safety and tolerability in a Phase I clinical trial and held promise for the treatment of life-threatening bacterial infections caused by multi-drug resistant Pseudomonas species.(4)
As Wayne has already observed, this space is hotting up.
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