According to experts in the field, the system of developing new antibiotics is broken and doctors are running out of ways to treat deadly infections.
Lawmakers have proposed the PASTEUR Act to fix the pipeline. New antibiotics are critical but they must be used sparingly, which means private drug companies cannot recoup their investment.
David Hyun, director of the Antibiotic Resistance Project at the Pew Charitable Trusts, said the bill would establish a subscription model to fund research for certain drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
“It delinks their revenue from the volume of sales and provides an up-front payment to the companies purely based on the value of the public-health value of the new antibiotic,” Hyun explained.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said patients in the U.S. contract 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections each year and more than 35,000 of them die. Experts estimate the U.S. spends $4.6 billion a year to treat infections caused by drug-resistant germs.
Dr. Sarah Doernberg, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, said the ability to treat infection dictates the safety of all kinds of medical procedures from giving birth to having surgery.
“We are able to operate ICUs and transplantation and give chemotherapy agent,” Doernberg noted. “All of these things that we do that are very invasive and come with risks of infection, and we need to be able to treat the infections in order to be able to provide modern health care.”
Despite bipartisan support, a similar bill failed to pass in 2021. Senate lawmakers reintroduced the PASTEUR Act in 2023 with reduced funding but it remains stalled in committee.
Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.
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