Industry advocates urge Senate health committee leaders to support antimicrobial pricing reform – Endpoints News

A long list of drug­mak­ers and in­dus­try or­ga­ni­za­tions has come to­geth­er in the hopes of once again bring­ing an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance to law­mak­ers’ at­ten­tion.

The group penned a let­ter to Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Bill Cas­sidy (R-LA), chair and rank­ing mem­ber of the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Health, Ed­u­ca­tion, La­bor and Pen­sions, re­spec­tive­ly, in sup­port of the PAS­TEUR Act which would ad­dress the grow­ing threat of an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance with a sub­scrip­tion-based pay­ment mod­el.

Un­der the PAS­TEUR mod­el, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment would ink con­tracts for a sup­ply of new an­tibi­otics, pay­ing drug­mak­ers a set price re­gard­less of how many dos­es are ac­tu­al­ly used.

The let­ter, dat­ed Wednes­day, states:

Un­der PAS­TEUR, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment can en­ter in­to con­tracts with in­no­va­tors to pay for a re­li­able sup­ply of nov­el an­timi­cro­bials with pay­ments that are de­cou­pled from the vol­ume of an­timi­cro­bials used. Im­por­tant­ly, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment on­ly pays once – the sub­scrip­tion pay­ment is all-in­clu­sive, and PAS­TEUR on­ly pays for suc­cess.

“This is a drug class that we have to think about pay­ing for drugs in a dif­fer­ent way,” said Kevin Out­ter­son, a Boston Uni­ver­si­ty law pro­fes­sor and founder of the non­prof­it CARB-X to sup­port an­tibac­te­r­i­al re­search. “We want to save them [an­tibi­otics] for the fu­ture, and that’s great, but the com­pa­ny will go bank­rupt.”

De­spite a ris­ing threat of an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance, Big Phar­ma has es­sen­tial­ly re­treat­ed from the risky field, where many an­tibi­otics ei­ther fail in de­vel­op­ment or with­er on the vine due to a lack of avail­able fund­ing. The ones that do get ap­proved are of­ten used spar­ing­ly to pre­serve ef­fec­tive­ness and slow the de­vel­op­ment of fur­ther re­sis­tance.

More than 150 in­dus­try ad­vo­cates sent a let­ter to Con­gress last year in sup­port of the PAS­TEUR Act, and many of them re­turned to sign the most re­cent one, in­clud­ing GSK, PhRMA, BIO, and the Broad In­sti­tute. Mer­ck was among the new sig­na­to­ries on Wednes­day.

“An­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance (AMR) is a se­ri­ous threat to health se­cu­ri­ty in the US and glob­al­ly,” GSK said in a state­ment to End­points News. “We hope Con­gress will take this ‘silent pan­dem­ic’ se­ri­ous­ly and in­clude PAS­TEUR in the Pan­dem­ic and All-Haz­ards Pre­pared­ness Reau­tho­riza­tion Act (PAH­PA) reau­tho­riza­tion this year.”

In 2019, an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance was a di­rect cause of about 1.27 mil­lion deaths world­wide, ac­cord­ing to the let­ter, and ex­perts have pre­dict­ed that it could lead to as many as 10 mil­lion deaths per year by 2050.

“We urge pol­i­cy­mak­ers to ad­dress the grow­ing threat of AMR by pass­ing the Pi­o­neer­ing An­timi­cro­bial Sub­scrip­tions to End Up­surg­ing Re­sis­tance (PAS­TEUR) Act on any mov­ing ve­hi­cle, in­clud­ing the Pan­dem­ic and All Haz­ards Pre­pared­ness Act reau­tho­riza­tion. The bill is a com­mon­sense pro­pos­al that will cre­ate des­per­ate­ly need­ed in­cen­tives to en­cour­age the de­vel­op­ment of and en­sure the avail­abil­i­ty of new an­timi­cro­bial med­i­cines for the fu­ture,” a PhRMA spokesper­son told End­points.

The AMR Ac­tion Fund — backed by a hand­ful of Big Phar­ma com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Pfiz­er, Eli Lil­ly, Mer­ck, John­son & John­son, Boehringer In­gel­heim and GSK — made its first in­vest­ments to boost the de­vel­op­ment of new an­timi­cro­bials last year.

How­ev­er, as Out­ter­son put it: “There’s a lot of mon­ey be­ing spent, but all of that re­quires that the com­pa­nies that get to ap­provals ac­tu­al­ly don’t get crushed eco­nom­i­cal­ly.”

“PAS­TEUR will at least re­store a small but healthy ecosys­tem for an­tibac­te­r­i­al R&D, be­cause this is some­thing we have to fix,” he added.