Posted by Michael Wonder on 19 Aug 2020
The antibiotic paradox: why companies can’t afford to create life-saving drugs
19 August 2020 - Paratek Pharmaceuticals successfully brought a new antibiotic to the market. So why is the company’s long-term survival in question?
As the COVID-19 pandemic caught hold early this year, a small drug company outside Philadelphia was struggling to market a compound that could help patients battling for their lives.
Paratek Pharmaceuticals had spent more than 20 years developing and testing an antibiotic named omadacycline (Nuzyra), which went on sale in the United States in 2019 for use against bacterial infections. Although antibiotics can’t fight the virus that causes COVID-19, almost 15% of people hospitalised with the disease go on to develop bacterial pneumonias, some of which are resistant to existing antibiotics.
