A new business model is needed to drive antibiotic development

The current business model for antibiotics is plagued by market failures and perverse incentives that both work against conservation efforts and provide insufficient rewards to drive the development of much-needed new treatments for resistant infection according to Kevin Outterson, from Boston University School of Law, Boston, US and Chatham House, UK, and colleagues in an Essay published in PLOS Medicine.

In their Essay the authors outline how a business model that delinks rewards from sales volume of an antibiotic could work. In addition they describe critical issues that need to be overcome to make this business model a reality so that new antibiotics could be developed and conserved to avoid the development of resistant bacteria.

The authors conclude, "[t]he UK's [Antimicrobial Resistance] Review, led by Lord Jim O'Neill, proposed that "a successful intervention must partially or fully 'de-link' profit from sales" ... With this growing focus on antibiotic delinkage, we see the need for a global conversation that applies delinkage principles to address access, conservation, and innovation of antibiotics in concert and not in isolation."