PASTEUR Act solves AMR.

Just this past week, the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) had its 2023 Leadership Summit in Arlington, VA, which is a three-day meeting for board members and volunteer leaders to connect and collaborate on ID workforce strategies and other top priorities of the organization. During this summit, IDSA members went to Capitol Hill to talk to Congressional leaders and their staffs about antimicrobial stewardship and specifically the Pasteur Act. For those not familiar with it, the Pasteur Act is a prospective bill that looks to encourage innovative drug development targeting the most threatening infections, improve the appropriate use of antibiotics, and ensure domestic availability of antibiotics when needed. The Pasteur Act would establish an innovative payment contract (subscription model) where the federal government invests in highly novel antibiotics and antifungals through installment payments in exchange for free access to developers’ drugs in government programs once available.

The bill was initially introduced in Congress in 2020, then reintroduced in both 2021 and earlier this year. When it was reintroduced back in April, five national organizations, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, IDSA, the Partnership to Fight Infectious Disease, and The Pew Charitable Trusts, issued a joint statement on the topic. “Antimicrobial resistance is not a partisan issue. It is an increasingly challenging public health emergency that reverberates far beyond just health care settings. Every 15 minutes, a person in the United States dies from an infection resistant to treatment with existing antimicrobial drugs. This means that since PASTEUR’s last introduction on June 16, 2021, more than 64,000 Americans have died because they did not have adequate medications to treat their infections,” part of the statement read.