Global AMR R&D Hub Launches Dynamic Data Dashboard
Will Be ‘One-Stop’ Knowledge Window For Antimicrobial Efforts
Executive Summary
The Global AMR R&D Hub’s newly launched Dynamic Dashboard aims to be “a comprehensive knowledge center for AMR R&D and market reforms,” its head tells Scrip.
Efforts to promote research in antimicrobial resistance and ways to successfully commercialize resulting innovative medicines got a boost this week with the launch of a one-stop-shop “knowledge window” called the Global AMR R&D Hub’s Dynamic Dashboard.
Activated on 31 March, the AMR hub’s Dynamic Dashboard aims to continuously collect and present information on R&D investments in the antimicrobial space, along with data on antibiotic products in the pipeline, and insights into push-and-pull market incentives to ensure their viability.
The Berlin-based Global AMR R&D Hub was launched in May 2018, mandated by the G20 Leaders’ declaration from Hamburg, Germany, in July 2017. It aims to further improve the coordination of international efforts and initiatives to tackle AMR while further increasing investments into R&D for AMR. (Also see "UK’s O’Neill ‘Frustrated’ By G20’s ‘Paltry’ AMR Message " - Scrip, 1 Jul, 2019.)
Its newly launched dashboard offers a concentrated “single-entry reference resource” for those interested in combating antimicrobial resistance and R&D towards that aim, according to Elmar Nimmesgern, who leads the project.
The idea is to provide real-time information on AMR R&D investments, products in the pipeline, and R&D incentives. “It aims to provide the evidence base to help set priorities and maximize the impact and efficiency of resources and efforts invested into AMR R&D,” Nimmesgern told Scrip.
Parts of the new dashboard are still work in progress. Still, one can already survey investments of $2.9bn in 4,971 projects from 81 funders in 53 countries, he added.
“At the moment we only have comprehensive data on public and philanthropic AMR funders but this will expand to encompass investments made in the private sector, by both big and small innovators, although that will take time given that companies for competitive reasons are reluctant to divulge exactly how much they are investing in a given product, ” he said.
The Hub has already been successful in collating information on AMR R&D activities in Japan. “This information on Japan had not been accessible in this manner before, so this represents progress,” Nimmesgern said.
The Hub’s mandate also includes collecting and conveying information on efforts to find viable market reward mechanisms to incentivize development and commercialization of novel antibiotics.
“We will eventually create a Dashboard for this subject, probably at the end of May or beginning of June, detailing efforts on push-and-pull incentives, such as the UK model and the Swedish model which are currently under development, Nimmesgern told Scrip. (Also see "UK, Sweden Test Differing Antibiotic Market Models" - In Vivo, 11 Mar, 2020.) “That way insights and conclusions from such projects can be made more widely available and accessible to our users,” he added.
Commercial Casualties
Experts said the Hub’s potential value – and the magnitude of the challenge posed to viable AMR innovation – was underscored again in March when the anti-infective innovator
Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals Inc., despite having brought an antibacterial Xerava (eravacycline) to approval in August 2018, was sold for stock worth $14.4m, plus a potential $12.5m more if aggressive sales targets are achieved to publicly listed AcelRx Pharmaceuticals Inc.. (Also see "AcelRx Obtains Troubled Antibiotic Firm Tetraphase In Stock Swap" - Scrip, 16 Mar, 2020.)
The company, which had income of $3m in 2019 from sales of Xerava, recorded cash $21m at end-December and no debt. It had raised an additional $17.5m during January 2020, according to John Rex, a respected advocate for viable AMR market solutions.
.“Tetraphase appears to have raised and spent more than $604m since inception. Make no mistake about it, this is functionally a wipe-out for Tetraphase investors,” Rex said in a 24 March email commenting on the troubled biotech’s demise.
He added: “This is yet another lesson in antibacterial economics that needs to be reviewed and understood by the entire community.”
The demise of Tetraphase echoed the fates of US-based Melinta Therapeutics Inc., which went into administration in December, and Achaogen Inc.which went bankrupt in April last year.
Rex, an advisor to the Wellcome Trust and formerly the chief strategy officer for CARB-X ,and a former voting member of the US Presidential Advisory Council on Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria, told Scrip he hoped the current COVID-19 pandemic would spur market reforms and effective market-based solutions for promoting novel antibiotics and preventing other novel antibiotics makers from going bust.
“Will it get a higher profile for AMR? I hope so, but awareness takes time,” he said, adding: “But we must never waste a good crisis!”