Funding for New Medications

1. Funding for New Medications Josiah Thompson, Jenny Little, Jamar Harper.

2. Background • Antibiotics are very important to our medical world. These drugs are created for a wide range of illnesses. • Overtime, bacteria have adapted to the antibiotics put into patients bodies. • Due to this adaptation, there are many concerns about how funding should be used to create or enhance medications.

3. Claim • We believe that funding for medications should be used to create new medications that are stronger and can fight off bacteria.

4. Leprosy • Leprosy is caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium Leprae. • Leprosy causes skin sores, nerve damage, and muscle weakness that gets worse over time. • Every year, about 100 people in the U.S catch Leprosy. This is an example of skin sores that form on a victim of leprosy.

5. Dapsone and Rifampin • Antibiotics called Dapsone and Rifampin are used to kill bacterium leprae. • These medications are taken at the same time. • These drugs can be taken while a female is pregnant. However, these drugs can be risky if taken too often. • Smaller doses of these drugs are given to children due to their immature bodies.

6. Adapting bacteria • Overtime, bacterium leprae have adapted to the antibiotics used. • Using antibiotics that don’t fight off the bacteria will not help a patient with leprosy. • Due to this adaptation of bacteria, rates of leprosy have increased. We can see in graph to the left that rates of leprosy have increased and decreased since 1995. The rates of no leprosy and the rates of leprosy victims are almost the same.

7. What do we do? • We believe that funding should be given to the development of new medications. • Creating new and stronger medications would decrease the leprosy rates and kill off bacterium leprae in leprosy victims.

8. Creating New Medications • Creating new medication is a long and rigorous process. It can take up to 12 years to take and idea and turn it into a legal medication. • To begin this process, scientists research body parts that withhold diseases. • Scientists go through 7 stages to create a new medication. These stages consist of Research, Discovery, Pre-clinical Testing, Clinical Trials, Regulatory Approval, Supply, and Monitoring. • Through these 7 stages, and idea is transformed into a medication.

9. Budgets • We predict that the process will take around 20 years. • We are asking for 10 billion dollars in funds. • These funds will go towards supplies and research for the medication.

10. Time Line (20 years) Discovery- (2 years, 1 billion) Developing and investigating compounds that can alter a disease process Supply- (5 years, 3 billion) Manufacturing and shipping the approved medicine so that doctors can prescribe it Clinical Trials- (4 years, 2 billion) Carrying out tests in humans Research- (1 year, ½ billion) Identify a new approach to treat a disease or condition. Pre-clinical Testing- (2 years, 1 billion) Understanding how a compound works in a system and its effects. Regulatory Approval- (1 year, ½ billion) Gaining approval for a new medicine from government regulators Monitoring- (5 years, 2 billion) Continuing to gain understanding from the use of new medicines

11. Concerns • There is a possibility that once a new medication is created, bacteria will start to adapt to this new medicine. • There are also concerns that new medications will be too strong to prescribe to children and senior citizens. • New medications could be very high in cost due to the time and money put into the creation. Some patients may not be able to afford the medication.

12. Sources • http://www.gsk.com/research/how-we-discover-new-medicines.html • http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/220455-treatment • http://www.stanford.edu/group/parasites/ParaSites2005/Leprosy/treatment.htm • http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs101/en/