In light of the news earlier this week of the discovery of a resistant strain of E. coli, this looks like good news from Harvard:
Erythromycin, which was discovered in a soil sample from the Philippines in 1949, has been on the market as a drug by 1953. “For 60 years chemists have been very, very creative, finding clever ways to ‘decorate’ this molecule, making changes around its periphery to produce antibiotics that are safer, more effective, and overcome the resistance bacteria have developed,” says Dr. Myers, Amory Houghton Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in Harvard’s Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. “That process is semisynthesis, modifying the naturally occurring substance.”
In contrast, the process described in the Nature study involves using “eight industrial chemicals, or substances derived from them,” according to Dr. Myers, and manipulating them in various combinations and then testing the products against panels of disease causing bacteria. This allows us to make new “new compounds in fewer steps than was previously possible.”
For a host of reasons, from the difficulty of developing antibiotics to the relatively low return on investment they offer, by 2013 the number of international pharmaceutical companies developing antibiotics had dwindled to four. And in each 5-year period from 1983 through 2007, the number of new antibiotics approved for use in the U.S. decreased, from 16 at the beginning of that period to only five by its end.
One thing that has complicated antibiotic development is a perceived reluctance by federal agencies to fund the research. In fact, Dr. Myers says, his new antibiotic development system would have been impossible without support from a Harvard alum and his wife who are interested in science and Harvard’s Blavatnik Accelerator Fund, which provided support for the initial creation of Myers’s company Macrolide Pharmaceuticals.
“I was making a presentation to a group of visiting alumns interested in science and one, Alastair Mactaggart, asked me about funding. I told him I had no funding because at that time we didn’t, and he followed me back to my office and said, ‘this is ridiculous: we have to do something about this’.”
Gee, it’s almost as though the government is completely incompetent at its core functions while busying itself with things that are none of its business.
Prize structures. For vaccines as well.
The usual nitwits like to clamor about how the profit motive incentivizes ‘palliatives’ over ‘cures’ … well, then fund methods for finding cures.
Essentially ordering a company after the discovery to produce it at ‘cost + 10%’, or whatever, isn’t as big a deal if you rewarded them $5 billion for finding a new, awesome, drug in the first place. A prize structure can also mean that places that normally rely on ‘public research funding’ can’t get away with grants that merely promise to flail around in the general vicinity of a known local optimum.
Evenmoreso, if you dropped the costs for small companies, by removing the 1965 introduction of the FDA determining *efficacy*, you would have *many* small companies producing drugs and vaccines. With the current average cost for getting a drug/vaccine to market soaring past $1.2 billion they must get to a certain point, and then sellout to a Big Pharma company, just to get it through human testing. Doctors and patients determine efficacy *far* better than a centralized bureaucracy.
I’m with you.
The FDA’s hurdles should revolve entirely around the warning label – and then indemnification for things you’ve put on the label. Warfarin may cause bleeding? Who knew? But having “May cause bleeding to the point of death” on the label should mean a lawsuit over “I bled to death” has no merit under the law.
The difference between the hurdles of ‘vitamin/herb track’ things (where there’s no ‘efficacy testing’) and ‘drugs’ is boggling.
“Gee, it’s almost as though the government is completely incompetent at its core functions while busying itself with things that are none of its business.”
When I see stories about research such as described above, I just can’t wait for Bernie to make all education free 🙁
Meanwhile Hilary is digging herself into ever deeper s–t. Bernie’s at least tied with her in CA, so who knows?
“Almost”?
[extra words added to make this long enough. 🙁 ]