A new report suggests a handful of innovative antimicrobials that could be approved within the next few years could save up to 160,000 lives if made available, and used appropriately, in the low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) where they're most desperately needed.
But the companies developing these products are not doing as much as they could be to make this goal a reality.
The report from the Access to Medicine Foundation tracks four innovative, late-stage antimicrobial research and development projects, and one recently approved product, that collectively treat a variety of drug-resistant infections, which disproportionately affect people in LMICs. It finds that while the companies developing these products are employing some strategies to increase access and promote stewardship in LMICs, there's much more they could be doing to ensure that these drugs will be available to every patient everywhere.
"We have a small, but effective, arsenal in the race to combat drug resistance," Access to Medicine Foundation CEO Jayasree Iyer, MD, PhD, said in a press release. "The difference between us winning or losing this race depends on how companies enable access to people living on the frontlines of drug resistance."
Lack of concrete plans for access, affordability, stewardship
The four products and companies highlighted in the report are gepotidacin (GSK), an antibiotic for treating urinary tract infections (UTIs) and gonorrhea; zoliflodacin (Innoviva), an oral antibiotic for gonorrhea; cefipime-taniborbactam (Venatorx), a combination antibiotic that targets complicated UTIs and hospital-acquired pneumonia caused by multidrug-resistant gram-negative bacteria; and olorofim, an antifungal targeting invasive fungal infections. The fifth product is Pfizer's aztreonam-avibactam, which was recently approved by the European Medicines agency for treating a host of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections.