We separately looked at two ideas on new technology:
The idea listed here focused on new market incentives for antimicrobials.
Advocacy for funding for new technology (not antibiotics) to help mitigate pandemics.
(We found this breakdown useful as the problems are different. The current patent system does not work for antimicrobials due to the need to limit the use of last line novel antibiotics. The current patent system works better for preparing for future pandemics but has limits as the pay out is uncertain and might not happen within the life-time of a patent.)
Under idea 1. Antimicrobials we didn’t look specifically at phage therapy. I don’t have a strong sense if phage therapy is in or out of scope of the various proposed policy changes, although I think the current focus is on antibiotics which would make phage therapy out of scope. This could be a thing for the new charity to look into. The existence of other emerging health tech that could also address microbial diseases could be seen as a case to reduce the expected impact of developing new antibiotics. This was not explicitly modelled (other than applying a 4% discount rate which should cover such things).
Under idea 2.new tech for pandemics we very briefly considered phage therapy. It got cut as an idea at the very early stage of our research when considering what new tech will have the biggest effect on future pandemics. This is not to say that it is not a good idea – I tend to describe CE’s research as rigorous but not comprehensive and I am sure that unfortunately good ideas are cut at the early stage of our prioritisation.
I hope that answers your question. Both reports should be made available in due course.
We also hope that any charity that begins life focusing on shifting market incentives for antibiotics could scale by moving onto policy advocacy and market shaping work for other key technologies. Technologies we were excited about more advocacy for are: platform DNA vaccine technology or UVC sterilisation or point of care diagnostics.
We separately looked at two ideas on new technology:
The idea listed here focused on new market incentives for antimicrobials.
Advocacy for funding for new technology (not antibiotics) to help mitigate pandemics.
(We found this breakdown useful as the problems are different. The current patent system does not work for antimicrobials due to the need to limit the use of last line novel antibiotics. The current patent system works better for preparing for future pandemics but has limits as the pay out is uncertain and might not happen within the life-time of a patent.)
Under idea 1. Antimicrobials we didn’t look specifically at phage therapy. I don’t have a strong sense if phage therapy is in or out of scope of the various proposed policy changes, although I think the current focus is on antibiotics which would make phage therapy out of scope. This could be a thing for the new charity to look into. The existence of other emerging health tech that could also address microbial diseases could be seen as a case to reduce the expected impact of developing new antibiotics. This was not explicitly modelled (other than applying a 4% discount rate which should cover such things).
Under idea 2. new tech for pandemics we very briefly considered phage therapy. It got cut as an idea at the very early stage of our research when considering what new tech will have the biggest effect on future pandemics. This is not to say that it is not a good idea – I tend to describe CE’s research as rigorous but not comprehensive and I am sure that unfortunately good ideas are cut at the early stage of our prioritisation.
I hope that answers your question. Both reports should be made available in due course.
We also hope that any charity that begins life focusing on shifting market incentives for antibiotics could scale by moving onto policy advocacy and market shaping work for other key technologies. Technologies we were excited about more advocacy for are: platform DNA vaccine technology or UVC sterilisation or point of care diagnostics.
Thank you very much for this detailed answer! I’ll check out the reports when they get out.