Project Snapshot

Treatment Optimization Pillar

Aligning Industry Incentives with AMR Control Goals: Exploring the Feasibility of an Antibiotic Susceptibility Bonus for Drugs to Treat Gram-negative Infection

Project Key Words: Antimicrobial Resistance, Antibiotics, Incentives, Pharmaceutical Industry

Principal Investigator: Aidan Hollis, PhD

Co-Investigator(s): Stephan Harbarth, MD; Olof Lindahl, PhD

Trainees: Javad Moradpour, MA

Project Theme: Policy, Economics & Sustainability

The Aim

Large new financial incentives to accelerate antibiotic research and development are being considered. The proposed Antibiotic Sustainability Bonus would make some part of those payments conditional on sustained pathogen susceptibility.

Why is This Important?

Appropriate incentives will help direct research to antimicrobials that have sustained effectiveness, and help companies to support stewardship.

The feasibility of this approach is not currently known.

Outcomes

Research papers that help guide government policy around market entry rewards for novel antibiotics.

Research Questions

  1. How to best to assess whether a given antibiotic retains effectiveness?
  2. How large would an antibiotic sustainability bonus have to be to affect behaviour?
  3. How should measurements of susceptibility reflect use in different countries?

 

Our Approach

  1. We are exploring the range of existing international susceptibility measures, focusing on Gram-negative bacteria.
  2. We are examining estimates of costs of drug development and clinical trials as well as recent antibiotic drug sales revenues.
  3. We are examining the international distribution of antibiotic sales.

 

Leveraged Sources of Support  

  • This project is funded under the JPIAMR in collaboration with CIHR.

Knowledge & Technology Exchange and Exploitation  

  • We hope that this project will help to inform policy around "market entry rewards" for new antibiotics.

Highly Qualified Personnel   

  • 1 PhD student