EU policymakers urged to consider AMR incentive models

In an EURACTIV report, policymakers across the EU are being urged to consider the full range of new incentives and pilot innovative approaches to combat antimicrobial resistance (AMR), including pull incentives and Netflix-style subscription services.

R&D for new antibiotics is regarded as a solution to counteract the threat of AMR that decreases the capability to treat infectious diseases and endangers modern medicine, including routine surgery. However, the availability of new antibiotics in many EU countries has proved to be particularly problematic as some antibiotics, despite being approved by the authorities, are still not commercially launched.

Remko van Leeuwen, CEO of Madam Therapeutics, a biotech company from the Netherlands active in the AMR R&D field and board member of the BEAM Alliance started his company in 2011 when this particular area of development was commercially not lucrative. He says: “I’ve started because of the medical need [to fight AMR], but the world has changed since 2011 and [… AMR] is far less attractive than 10 years ago.” According to him and other SMEs in the BEAM Alliance, the fight against this new potential pandemic needs to be supported more broadly as returning investment by sales alone will not work. He concludes the cost of bringing and keeping antimicrobials to the market is too high to offer an incentive for a private company to invest. For this reason policymakers need to develop new incentives and pilot innovative approaches.

Read the full EURACTIV report ‘From words to action: Exploring the ecosystem of antimicrobial resistance’: https://www.euractiv.com/section/health-consumers/special_report/from-words-to-action-exploring-the-ecosystem-of-antimicrobial-resistance/