Encouraging Sustainable Use of Antibiotics: A Commentary on the DRIVE-AB Recommended Innovation Incentives

The Innovative Medicines Initiative recently funded DRIVE-AB, a 3-year project that published its final report in early 2018.2 The project brought together pharmaceutical companies, academics, and other groups to help develop a new business model to spur new antibiotic development, disentangle perverse incentives that drive antibiotic resistance (and thus help preserve long-term efficacy, referred to as “sustainable use” in DRIVE-AB), and make antibiotics equitably available globally. Drawing from basic economic theory and the incentives that derive from it, this paper examines the extent to which the incentive models selected by DRIVE-AB do or do not support the long-term sustainable use (or long-term effectiveness) of the novel antibiotics they seek to produce.

Source: The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 46 S1 (2018): 75-80