Profit Drives Future Research in Fighting Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

11-28-04 The December 6 Issue of Newsweek has an interesting article called “Trapping the Superbugs” by Anna Kuchment. The article is about what is coming next in the continual battle against infection by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. I am very disappointed to see that there is no mention of using probiotic bacteria, i.e. good bacteria, to fight the ever increasing antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. I am sure part of the reason why the drug companies are not researching good bacteria is because they do not offer the same profit potential as the drugs do and Ms. Kuchment’s article confirms how much the profit-potential determines where the research goes.

I think we are all familiar with the problem of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. We all know that they evolve rather quickly to become resistant to our new drugs. But the question is whether medicine is still going down the same path of stronger and stronger antibiotics as the answer? Well, maybe not entirely. According to the article by Ms. Kuchment, many of the major pharmaceutical companies are no longer researching antibiotics but have switched to researching chronic disease conditions since there is more profit to be made from them. However a number of small drug companies are still looking for new antibiotics. Clearly, this research is also being driven by profit. Ms. Kuchment quotes Paratek Pharmaceuticals’ cofounder Dr. Stuart Levy as saying, "Finding a new antibiotic is an area where small companies can really excel. We can focus all our efforts on it, and we don't have to go to our investors or stockholders and say, 'We have a billion-dollar drug.' We'll be happy with a few hundred million.”

I am not against companies making profits, but I am worried about what we are missing because it might be a relatively cheap answer. So what else is the medical community researching besides antibiotics?

Ms. Kuchment says that some companies, such as Inhibitex, are using human antibodies to attack the superbugs. Antibodies are the part of our immune system that identify foreign invaders and then signal the immune system to attack. Other companies, such as Intralytix and GangaGen, are researching the possibility of battling infections with phages (a phage is a naturally occurring virus that attacks a specific germ). Phage therapy was utilized in the U.S. before antibiotics became popular and some doctors in Poland and parts of the former Soviet Union are still using it.

The Newsweek article says, “While most for-profit companies target diseases of the industrialized world, philanthropic groups are tackling the much larger problems of the developing world. Armed with grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others, the New York-based TB Alliance is developing one of the first new drugs against tuberculosis in more than 30 years.” The article also says the U.S. Congress will be looking at many ideas and proposals next year as part of the medical initiative BioShield II.

So what is my opinion? I really like the approach of using antibodies to attack disease-causing bacteria because it focuses on how our immune systems work and enhances what we do naturally. I wish we would also research the potential the good bacteria that live in our intestinal tract have for fighting antibiotic-resistant bacteria because they are a tremendous aid in keeping harmful bacteria in check and the immune system strong. I am intrigued by the possibilities good intestinal bacteria might provide if we knew more. On my website I report as much “copyright free” research on good bacteria as I can find (and there is more research that I am not free to publish because I do not have permission). None of this research is an overall approach to fighting antibiotic-resistant germs but instead is focused on tiny details about how bacteria function. Click on this link if you want to check out Research on Good Bacteria on the website. If you can make your way through the minute details, I think it shows there is a potential for more than what we are doing.