I don't think it will "come as a surprise" to any major public pharma company. They are all in the business of managing risk:
* that a drug test will fail trials
* that they will be beat to market by a competing drug
* that a contamination in their products will cause damage to patients
* that R&D costs will not be recovered before the patent expires
* keeping R&D costs low enough to be competitive, but high enough to have a pipeline of future products
IIRC, general antibiotics have never lasted more than 18 months before we found a bacteria that became resistant to them. Pharma companies know this more than the rest of us.
They are betting/hedging on getting to market first with a multi-drug resistant (MDR) bug killer. Everyone on Earth will need a new antibiotic as the current MDR bugs become more widespread. And the more widespread the current MDR bugs are, the more valuable a fresh antibiotic would be (it would be an effective monopoly).
18 months is the time until any resistance is found, but that doesn't mean we hang up the antibiotic. We do susceptibility testing, we use higher doses, we use combination therapy, etc.
> IIRC, general antibiotics have never lasted more than 18 months before we found a bacteria that became resistant to them.
This does not seem to be correct. With the most recently introduced antibiotics—Levoflaxacin, Linezolid and Ceftaroline—resistance has developed very rapidly. But that didn't used to be the case; old antibiotics lasted much longer before resistance developed. [1]
I am not sure why this is---are these newer antibiotics more fragile (i.e., easier to resist), or are they being misused more broadly? If it is the latter reason, then perhaps we should stop developing new antibiotics until better usage practices are enforced. It is stupid to spend a lot of money developing antibiotics, only to throw it away by misusing them.
general antibiotics have never lasted more than 18 months before we found a bacteria that became resistant to them
But this doesn't mean the drug won't be used. Drug resistance rates are often in the single percent of patients. You can have resistance out there, but still have a huge market.
IIRC, general antibiotics have never lasted more than 18 months before we found a bacteria that became resistant to them. Pharma companies know this more than the rest of us.
They are betting/hedging on getting to market first with a multi-drug resistant (MDR) bug killer. Everyone on Earth will need a new antibiotic as the current MDR bugs become more widespread. And the more widespread the current MDR bugs are, the more valuable a fresh antibiotic would be (it would be an effective monopoly).