U.S. government wants new antibiotics

WASHINGTON, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- The U.S. government is considering tax breaks and other incentives for companies that develop antibiotics to produce new drugs, officials said.

New and stronger antibiotics are needed for "super bugs" that are resistant to existing drugs, The New York Times reported.

Only a handful of new antibiotics have been developed in the past few years because they are expensive to develop and work too well, the report said.

"There's this perverse disincentive against antibiotics because they work so well," said J. Kevin Judice, chief executive of pharmaceutical company Achaogen.

In addition to tax breaks, the government might extend the life of patents on existing or new drugs, and it could offer federal funding of research and guarantee the purchase of new antibiotics, the newspaper said.

"There is a market failure," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat and the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who said he was considering introducing legislation to spur development of new antibiotics. "We need to look at ways to spur development of this market."

Health officials are alarmed by the spread from India of a newly discovered mutation called NDM-1, which renders certain germs like E.coli invulnerable to nearly all modern antibiotics.

About 100,000 Americans a year are killed by infections acquired in hospitals, many resistant to multiple antibiotics. Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, the best-known super bug, kills more Americans annually than does AIDS, the report said.