FDA and Congress are making great strides in improving the regulatory pathway and intellectual property protection for anti-infectives. But without changes in the reimbursement process, the package of incentives may not be enough to spur innovation in the class.

Deadly infections with bacteria that resist even the strongest antibiotics are on the rise in hospitals in the United States, and there is only a “limited window of opportunity” to halt their spread, health officials at the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention warned this spring. In this case, the bacteria in question were bugs normally found in the gut. 

According to the CDC, they have acquired a lethal trait: they are unscathed by antibiotics, including carbapenems, a group of drugs that are generally considered a last resort. When these resistant germs invade parts of the body where they do not belong, like the bloodstream, lungs or urinary tract, the illness may be untreatable. It was one of these bugs – a drug-resistant form of the feared bacteria Klebsiella that triggered a notorious outbreak in 2011 at a hospital at the National Institutes of Health that killed six people and made another 11 seriously ill.

Read the full paper here.