Turning the tide of antibiotic resistance

Fact:
Antibiotic resistance has been called one of the world?s most pressing public health concerns.
—Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2003

The worldwide anti-infective market generates more than $62 billion in annual sales, growing at more than 9%. Anti-infective drugs represent 11% of the global pharmaceutical market. Antibiotic sales totaled $34 billion worldwide, with $12 million in sales in North America. Anti-virals sales worldwide totaled $12.7 billion and $7 billion in North America. Anti-fungals totaled $4.4 billion worldwide and $1.5 billion in North America.

MiddleBrook™ Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is focused on the development of antibiotics that can be utilized to successfully treat community acquired bacterial infections. In 2005, more than 270 million prescriptions were written for antibiotics in the US. Nearly 80% of all antibiotic prescriptions were written for just 10 molecules. Amoxicillin and cephalexin combined accounted for 30% or more than 80 million prescriptions in 2005. Amoxicillin and cephalexin are the numbers one and three most-prescribed antibiotics in the US. The MiddleBrook pipeline features once-daily versions of these popular broad-spectrum antibiotics.

In recent years, major pharmaceutical companies have deployed fewer research and development resources toward antibiotics. Unfortunately, drug-resistant bacteria are becoming more prevalent and the weapons physicians have to treat bacterial infections are less-effective now than they were just ten years ago. In fact, the Infectious Diseases Society of America has urged policymakers to establish a series of incentives for the pharmaceutical industry to again focus their resources on discovering and developing new therapies for bacterial infections.

MiddleBrook is one of a dwindling number of companies actively developing new antibiotics for the market. The work that we do here at MiddleBrook may lead to enhancements of existing antibiotics that extend their utility for another generation. Even more importantly, some of our earliest stage combination products may prove to be potent therapeutics against resistant bacteria and result in breakthrough treatments for an area of high unmet medical need. Concerns regarding antibiotic resistance, the dearth of new therapies in development, and the fear of flu epidemics and other infectious diseases continue to be high profile subjects among public health policy makers, the U.S. public, and throughout the world. Hopefully, MiddleBrook? technology will play an important role in the treatment of infectious disease.