Webinar, Panel
Antibiotic Resistance and Chronic Disease: Understanding the Challenges and Some Possible Solutions
Milken InstituteAmanda Jezek, Jonathan Daniels, David Greenberg, Thomas Heyman, Kathy Talkington, Mark Williams, Tom Heyman
- Faster Cures plans to publish a report on solutions to financial challenges in antibiotic research and development in early 2022.
- Multiple stakeholders anticipate antimicrobial resistance (AMR) burdens will increase due to new viral infections like COVID-19 and their mutations, potentially impacting communities with chronic conditions and the 50% of cancer patients where infections play a primary or associated role in mortality.
- A study spanning March through September 2020 across 148 hospitals in 17 states reported a 24% increase in hospital-onset multidrug-resistant infections associated with COVID-19 surges.
- IDSA and Pew Charitable Trust note that a 2021 study estimated six multidrug-resistant pathogens caused $1.9 billion in increased Medicare costs, nearly 12,000 deaths, and nearly 450,000 inpatient days.
- Pew Charitable Trust estimates the current pipeline of approximately 43 antibiotics is inadequate and expects only one out of five to reach FDA approval.
- Dr. David Greenberg projects that drug-resistant pathogens will recur in lung transplantation for cystic fibrosis (CF) patients and that resistant infections in patients on prophylactic antibiotics will become even more common, affecting the entire cancer care lifecycle.
- Sepsis Alliance and IDSA expect that new data trusts and increased diagnostic deployment will improve diagnosis speed, risk identification, and targeted antimicrobial prescriptions to prevent overuse and move away from broad-spectrum "blunt instruments."
- The CF Foundation intends to continue fundraising to plug market gaps for new biotechs, addressing the significant unmet need for CF patients including those facing allergic reactions to current effective antibiotics.
- The Pasteur Act is anticipated to address market failure by delinking sales volume from financial reward, providing federal funding for high-priority drugs, and offering grants for rural, tribal, and safety-net hospitals to strengthen stewardship and data reporting.
- Current federal investments on the "push side" of development are viewed as insufficient, with experts expecting the Pasteur Act to fill the gap where companies might fail after FDA approval due to low sales volume.
- Educational efforts are expected to bear fruit with increasing congressional recognition of the problem, though stakeholders warn the issue will not improve without policy intervention.
- The broader ecosystem is expected to grow with increased diversity in approaches, including pathogen-specific therapies, though global resistance spread via agricultural antibiotic use remains a critical concern.
- Momentum to tackle AMR is building as Congress considers policy proposals, with increased stakeholder engagement expected to make it harder to dismiss the urgency of the crisis.