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Industry Not Investing
Why are Large Pharmaceuticals not Investing?
The answer to this question has many layers.
Pharmaceutical representatives have put forward a variety of reasons to explain their reluctance to invest, including:
- concerns about legal liability if the product fails to protect
- the belief that only poor women in the developing world need microbicides and they do not have the money to pay
- uncertainty about what regulatory agencies such as the FDA will require for licensure
- fear that the pressure to provide a microbicide free to developing nations would undermine any potential to make money
- lack of in-house expertise in developing products that are applied intra-vaginally
Even if advocates were able to overcome or refute each of these concerns (e.g. there clearly is a market in the US and Europe for microbicides that work against STIs like chlamydia, HPV and herpes), the fact remains that as an entirely new class of product, microbicides are plagued by high uncertainty.
In general, pharmaceutical executives shy away from projects whose up-front development costs and market potential are difficult to quantify. This works against microbicides when they compete within large pharmaceutical companies for access to research and development funds. As one pharmaceutical staffer observed, "A certain return will always win out over an uncertain one."
There is also a "disconnect" between the scientific and marketing expertise of the firms already making AIDS drugs and the positioning of microbicides as a "consumer" product. Most drug companies are set up to market and distribute drugs to doctors and hospitals, not directly to consumers. The companies that market "over-the counter" drugs and consumer products have little desire to enter the politically charged fields of sex and HIV.
In the end, however, it comes down to money. Large pharmaceuticals are not investing in microbicides because in the short term, it is not in their economic self-interest to do so. Large companies will wait for someone else --the government, a small biotech, or a nonprofit institute-- to take the up-front risks of developing early products.
Then they will step in to license and distribute successful products and work to develop the next generation of products.
