As drug-resistant infections proliferate, financial barriers are preventing the pharmaceutical industry from investing in new drugs to fight off superbugs. Economics correspondent Paul Solman, in a series of reports with science correspondent Miles O'Brien, explores how researchers could be incentivized to develop new antibiotics.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now to our series on the hunt for new antibiotics, as superbugs and bacteria are building more resistance to the current line of drugs.
It is a joint project from our correspondents Paul Solman and Miles O’Brien.
Last night, Paul looked at why the market for developing new drugs is simply no longer working. But, as one expert warned, antibiotics are a class of drugs that could be lost for treatment if there’s no new investment.
As part of his series Making Sense, Paul looks at some new options for solving that problem.
PAUL SOLMAN: Northeastern University biologist Slava Epstein has traveled the world on the hunt for hitherto undiscovered microbes. Some trips are shorter than others.
MILES O’BRIEN: We are five minutes from your lab, right in the heart of Boston, and this soil is as good as any?
DR. SLAVA EPSTEIN, Co-founder, Novobiotic Pharmaceuticals: This soil is as good as any.
PAUL SOLMAN: As Professor Epstein told my NewsHour counterpart on the science beat, Miles O’Brien, just about any handful of soil contains tens of thousands of different microbial species, 99 percent of which remain utterly unexamined, in part because they refuse to grow in petri dishes.
Epstein’s breakthrough was figuring out how to cultivate them, inventing a gizmo that isolates individual bacteria, then grows them back into teeming colonies.
So, you can kind of see through them there.
AMY SPOERING, Research Director, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals: That’s right. So, in each one of those individual holes, in theory, there is a single cell. And by capturing single cells and putting them back out into the environment that they came from, you can cultivate microorganisms no one has ever cultured before.
PAUL SOLMAN: Amy Spoering is research director at NovoBiotic, the company Slava Epstein co-founded to study newfound bacteria, now up to 60,000 strains, and counting, as potential sources of new antibiotics. And how does that work?
SLAVA EPSTEIN: Antibiotics are produced by microorganisms to kill their neighbors, so the enemies, the competitors. This is an exercise that the microorganisms have been going through for the past four billion years.
PAUL SOLMAN: And that humans have exploited for the past century or so, with chemicals from microorganisms like penicillium, the mold that makes penicillin.
The trick is finding chemicals that kill infections in people without killing the people too.
So, I don’t mind interviewing movers and shakers, but it’s actually making me slightly dizzy, so I’m just going to look at you.
AMY SPOERING: Just look at me. That’s fine.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, what is this?
AMY SPOERING: So, what this is, is, this is where we grow all of the novel microorganisms that we cultivate. They need a large amount of air in order to grow well, in order to produce the antibiotics.
PAUL SOLMAN: So you’re aerating them?
AMY SPOERING: That’s right. That’s why they’re shaking.
PAUL SOLMAN: So far, they have identified 33 novel compounds here, one of which may be a breakthrough: a new antibiotic that kills bacteria in two completely different ways, making resistance much less likely.
AMY SPOERING: So, this is making our lead compound, teixobactin.
PAUL SOLMAN: And the cost, if all goes well, of eventually getting it to market?
AMY SPOERING: That’s big money.
PAUL SOLMAN: Big money that investors would be tripping over one another to provide, right, to get in on the ground floor of the next Z-Pak.
AMY SPOERING: The payout will be huge, if we are successful.
PAUL SOLMAN: But it’s a long lug, says Spoering, between bug and drug.
AMY SPOERING: This is 30 liters of it growing to produce the compound that we need to do the next set of pre-clinical tests.
PAUL SOLMAN: And then, after you have done those animal trials, the toxicology trials…
AMY SPOERING: Yes.
PAUL SOLMAN: … then, and only then, do you do trials on humans?
AMY SPOERING: First, an initial set of studies that is just for safety, and then you move on to the efficacy studies, which is phase two, and then much larger efficacy studies, which are phase three, clinical trials.
DALLAS HUGHES, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals: Drug discovery is a very long process.
PAUL SOLMAN: Dallas Hughes is NovoBiotic’s president.
Read also: Why are there so few antibiotics in the research and development pipeline? http://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/features/why-are-there-so-few-antibiotics-in-the-research-and-development-pipeline/11130209.article
Read also: Big Pharma must lose its resistance to antibiotic research https://www.ft.com/content/805e4746-fb0c-11e4-9aed-00144feab7de
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now to our series on the hunt for new antibiotics, as superbugs and bacteria are building more resistance to the current line of drugs.
It is a joint project from our correspondents Paul Solman and Miles O’Brien.
Last night, Paul looked at why the market for developing new drugs is simply no longer working. But, as one expert warned, antibiotics are a class of drugs that could be lost for treatment if there’s no new investment.
As part of his series Making Sense, Paul looks at some new options for solving that problem.
PAUL SOLMAN: Northeastern University biologist Slava Epstein has traveled the world on the hunt for hitherto undiscovered microbes. Some trips are shorter than others.
MILES O’BRIEN: We are five minutes from your lab, right in the heart of Boston, and this soil is as good as any?
DR. SLAVA EPSTEIN, Co-founder, Novobiotic Pharmaceuticals: This soil is as good as any.
PAUL SOLMAN: As Professor Epstein told my NewsHour counterpart on the science beat, Miles O’Brien, just about any handful of soil contains tens of thousands of different microbial species, 99 percent of which remain utterly unexamined, in part because they refuse to grow in petri dishes.
Epstein’s breakthrough was figuring out how to cultivate them, inventing a gizmo that isolates individual bacteria, then grows them back into teeming colonies.
So, you can kind of see through them there.
AMY SPOERING, Research Director, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals: That’s right. So, in each one of those individual holes, in theory, there is a single cell. And by capturing single cells and putting them back out into the environment that they came from, you can cultivate microorganisms no one has ever cultured before.
PAUL SOLMAN: Amy Spoering is research director at NovoBiotic, the company Slava Epstein co-founded to study newfound bacteria, now up to 60,000 strains, and counting, as potential sources of new antibiotics. And how does that work?
SLAVA EPSTEIN: Antibiotics are produced by microorganisms to kill their neighbors, so the enemies, the competitors. This is an exercise that the microorganisms have been going through for the past four billion years.
PAUL SOLMAN: And that humans have exploited for the past century or so, with chemicals from microorganisms like penicillium, the mold that makes penicillin.
The trick is finding chemicals that kill infections in people without killing the people too.
So, I don’t mind interviewing movers and shakers, but it’s actually making me slightly dizzy, so I’m just going to look at you.
AMY SPOERING: Just look at me. That’s fine.
PAUL SOLMAN: So, what is this?
AMY SPOERING: So, what this is, is, this is where we grow all of the novel microorganisms that we cultivate. They need a large amount of air in order to grow well, in order to produce the antibiotics.
PAUL SOLMAN: So you’re aerating them?
AMY SPOERING: That’s right. That’s why they’re shaking.
PAUL SOLMAN: So far, they have identified 33 novel compounds here, one of which may be a breakthrough: a new antibiotic that kills bacteria in two completely different ways, making resistance much less likely.
AMY SPOERING: So, this is making our lead compound, teixobactin.
PAUL SOLMAN: And the cost, if all goes well, of eventually getting it to market?
AMY SPOERING: That’s big money.
PAUL SOLMAN: Big money that investors would be tripping over one another to provide, right, to get in on the ground floor of the next Z-Pak.
AMY SPOERING: The payout will be huge, if we are successful.
PAUL SOLMAN: But it’s a long lug, says Spoering, between bug and drug.
AMY SPOERING: This is 30 liters of it growing to produce the compound that we need to do the next set of pre-clinical tests.
PAUL SOLMAN: And then, after you have done those animal trials, the toxicology trials…
AMY SPOERING: Yes.
PAUL SOLMAN: … then, and only then, do you do trials on humans?
AMY SPOERING: First, an initial set of studies that is just for safety, and then you move on to the efficacy studies, which is phase two, and then much larger efficacy studies, which are phase three, clinical trials.
DALLAS HUGHES, President, NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals: Drug discovery is a very long process.
PAUL SOLMAN: Dallas Hughes is NovoBiotic’s president.
Read also: Why are there so few antibiotics in the research and development pipeline? http://www.pharmaceutical-journal.com/news-and-analysis/features/why-are-there-so-few-antibiotics-in-the-research-and-development-pipeline/11130209.article
Read also: Big Pharma must lose its resistance to antibiotic research https://www.ft.com/content/805e4746-fb0c-11e4-9aed-00144feab7de
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