Pharmaceuticals scale back antibiotic research as profit margins bite

PHARMACEUTICAL companies like Wyeth are scaling back or ending research into antibiotics due to a lack of profit potential, even as infections are becoming more resistant to current treatments, microbiologists said.

Ten of the world’s top 15 pharmaceutical companies ceased funding, spun off or greatly curtailed research on antibiotics recently, Wyeth researcher Steven Projan told doctors at a meeting in Chicago.

Companies see little growth in the $24 billion antimicrobial market and are putting their money elsewhere, such as arthritis and mental illness, he said. Many infections are treated with cheap, generic antibiotics, making the market unappealing, Projan said.

Companies need public funding and more research on drug resistance to increase their work in combating infectious diseases, which trail only heart disease and cancer as the leading killers in the US, he said.

“It really isn’t clear to me why people should invest in these agents now,” Projan said at the American Society for Microbiology’s annual meeting.

Two recent products, King Pharmaceuticals Inc’s Synercid and Pfizer Inc’s Zyvox, did not meet commercial expectations, Projan said.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Pharmaceuticals Index, which includes Pfizer, King and Madison, New Jersey-based Wyeth, has climbed just 2.4% this year. That’s compared with a 15% gain for the overall S&P 500.

Some firms, like Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline and New Brunswick, New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson, say they will continue to support antibiotic research. Glaxo’s Augmentin antibiotic had yearly sales of about $2bn before generic competition ate into its revenue.

“Glaxo still sees a need to have new antibiotics”, said Clarence Young, a researcher for the company.

Drug companies need to make more of an effort to find new anti-infective agents as antibiotic resistance grows, said Karen Bush, a researcher at Johnson & Johnson.

Anti-infectives are cheaper and easier to develop than other drugs and drugmakers also have a social obligation to create solutions, she said.