Incentives for New Drugs to Tackle Anti-Microbial Resistance

Resistance to antibiotics is growing, posing a major health risk in rich and poor countries. Additional ways of rewarding R&D are required. Mechanisms designed to encourage companies to undertake R&D on new medicines are generally characterised as either “push” or “pull” programs. A new OHE Briefing has just been published entitled: Incentives for New Drugs to Tackle Anti-Microbial Resistance. Resistance to antibiotics is growing, posing a major health risk in rich and poor countries. Additional ways of rewarding R&D are required. Mechanisms designed to encourage companies to undertake R&D on new medicines are generally characterised as either “push” or “pull” programs. Push funding alone will not generate new medicines. Pull incentives are key to stimulating R&D for new antibiotics and vaccines. In this Briefing we look at the proposals in the 2016 O’Neill Report commissioned by the UK government and the 2017 GUARD Report commissioned by the German government. Our assessment is that both Transferable Intellectual Property Rights and the Market Entry Reward should be further explored for use in the EU as a regional “pull” incentive. A lead group of countries need to work together to develop a set of pull incentives to drive new antibiotic and vaccine R&D in Europe and globally.