Pharma failing to address MRSA drugs market
pharmafile | January 2, 2007 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing |Â Â Â
News that a new strain of the MRSA bug has reached Europe from the US has left drug developers under even greater pressure to come up with effective antidotes.
The new alarm follows the recent outbreak of eight cases of Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) positive community-associated MRSA in a West Midlands hospital, along with close household contacts, resulting in two fatalities.
Although the outbreak of several different varieties of CA-MRSA have been reported previously, the Health Protection Agency says this is the first documented report of nosocomial transmission of PVL-positive CA-MRSA in Britain.
Analysts at Datamonitor said: "In the light of the increasing CA-MRSA incidence, oral MRSA drugs remain a key unmet need that has not been addressed by any drug developer yet, indicating there is still room in the dense market."
Datamonitor has predicted that MRSA drugs will achieve sales "exceeding $200 million in 2010 in the UK alone".
According to the HPA, the new strain of the virus appears to have occurred on two separate wards in the West Midlands hospital and went undetected until a fatal case was examined in detail.
In recent years, CA-MRSA has emerged as a potentially virulent pathogen among previously healthy young people in community settings worldwide. Outbreaks of the new superbug have been diagnosed in individuals in close contact with infected patients, including sporting teams, military personnel and injecting drug users.
Speaking to The Times, Angela Kearns, an MRSA expert at the Health Protection Agency, said: "PVL-MRSA is more toxic than other strains of MRSA, but can still be treated with antibiotics."
She added:"The agency is advising the West Midlands hospital on outbreak-control measures and will continue to monitor MRSA infection nationally."
In the UK, the National Audit Office estimates that 5,000 people die each year from infections such as MRSA, but admits the figure could be much higher.
Efforts to counteract these infections are costing the NHS at least £1 billion a year and the NAO's 2004 report predicted that cases would double before the end of the decade. Pharma companies are battling to produce new antibiotics to destroy these emerging MRSA strains.
Wyeth's Tygacil, a first-in-class antibiotic to be used against resistant strains of bacterial infections, has been approved in the US and analysts are predicting peak sales in excess of $1 billion.
Pfizer's Zeven is in late stage development, along with Theravance's Telavancin.
MRSA was discovered in Britain as far back as 1961. A recent HPA survey found that Britain has the fifth-worst record for MRSA out of 32 countries -following behind Malta, Cyprus, Romania and Portugal.
