Antimicrobial Drug/Test Joint Development Needs Better Incentives

Drugmakers, devicemakers and regulators appear to have come to a mutual understanding of the barriers each party faces in the development and approval of antimicrobial drugs and antimicrobial susceptibility test (AST) devices, but many questions still remain on how to make AST devices available in a timely manner following approval of a new drug.

Atop the list of issues is the significant lag between approval times of antimicrobial drugs and AST devices, the groups said at a recent FDA workshop. For example, Merck...