Re-engineering the Value Chain

3Rs for innovating novel antibiotics: sharing resources, risks, and rewards (So, et al. | BMJ | 2012)

Sharing resources, risks, and rewards (3Rs) along the value chain of new drugs can reduce barriers to antibiotic innovation. Sharing resources can improve the availability of the building blocks of scientific research, such as compound libraries and natural products as candidates for drug development. Sharing risks seeks to leverage public sector financing to enable greater innovation. Sharing rewards can help ensure fair returns on public investment and affordable end products for those in need. In concert, the 3Rs offer useful benchmarks to evaluate how public investments and incentives might shape the enabling conditions for innovation of novel antibiotics and health technologies to tackle antibiotic resistance.

Towards new business models for R&D for novel antibiotics (So, et al. | Drug Resistance Updates | 2011)

Abstract: “In the face of a growing global burden of resistance to existing antibiotics, a combination of scientific and economic challenges has posed significant barriers to the development of novel antibacterials over the past few decades. Yet the bottlenecks at each stage of the pharmaceutical value chain—from discovery to post-marketing—present opportunities to reengineer an innovation pipeline that has fallen short. The upstream hurdles to lead identification and optimization may be eased with greater multi-sectoral collaboration, a growing array of alternatives to high-throughput screening, and the application of open source approaches. Product development partnerships and South–South innovation platforms have shown promise in bolstering the R&D efforts to tackle neglected diseases. Strategies that delink product sales from the firms’ return on investment can help ensure that the twin goals of innovation and access are met. To effect these changes, both public and private sector stakeholders must show greater commitment to an R&D agenda that will address this problem, not only for industrialized countries but also globally.”