Cheap new combination pill to help fight malaria

	Tweet

A cheap and easy-to-use combination pill for Malaria is being readied for launch next year, giving doctors fresh ammunition to fight the deadly mosquito-borne disease, its developers said on Friday.

French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis SA is working with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), a non-profit group, to bring the medicine to market at a target price of under $1 for adults and 50 cents for children.

The two-in-one pill is expected to be used mainly in Africa, where a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds.

It belongs to a new generation of artemisinin-based combination therapies, or ACT drugs, which are recommended by the World Health Organisation because of growing resistance to older treatments such as chloroquine.

Switzerland’s Novartis AG already markets such a fixed-dose ACT drug, Coartem, but it needs to be taken eight times a day. Sanofi’s drug is taken just twice. Coartem is also more expensive at around $2.40 per treatment course. Both Novartis and Sanofi have committed to supply their medicines to governments, international organisations and aid groups in affected countries at no profit. Consumers in developed countries are likely to have to pay five to 10 times more.

Unlike Coartem, Sanofi’s product - which combines artesunate, a derivative of artemisinin, with the older antimalarial amodiaquine - is not patented, leaving the door open to generic firms to make a similar product.

DNDi Executive Director Bernard Pecoul said the new pill could help 100 million people, although it is not recommended for regions in which amodiaquine resistance has developed.

Relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres welcomed the new treatment, which will be filed for regulatory approval around the end of 2005, but said it was not a panacea, since the malaria parasite continuously evolves in response to new drugs.

CROP SHORTAGE

One problem facing both manufacturers is a shortage of artemisia annua, the crop from which artemisinin is extracted.

Novartis announced in November that its traditional Chinese suppliers were unable to deliver sufficient quantities this year and it would only be able to make around 30 million doses of Coartem in 2005 - half the expected demand.

At present, nearly all the world’s artemisia annua is grown in China or Vietnam. But Sanofi Vice President Philippe Baetz said his company was now looking to secure supplies from Kenya and Madagascar.

“I’m confident that Africa will develop a lot of plantations,” he told reporters, adding that Sanofi had already guaranteed enough supply to manufacture 20 million doses of its drug in 2006.

In the long run, drug researchers hope to be able to replace the plant extract with a synthetic chemical, but Pecoul said this goal was at least five years away. 

RELATED STORIES:
Efficacy of blood pressure drug questioned   New rabies vaccine promising for wildlife   FDA grants Cerexa fast track designation   Insulin-like protein points to new diabetes drugs   Packaging matters in sticking with medicine   Statins may cut pneumonia deaths: study   Free Drug Samples May Burden Patients’ Pockets   UK heart patients told to stop COX-2 inhibitors   Anti-Hypertensive Drugs May Help Prevent and Treat Alzheimer’s Disease   Nevada launching Web site for Canada drug imports   Roche to supply Tamiflu raw ingredient to Vietnam   Merck decided against 2000 Vioxx study

Comments

[ + Post Your Own ]

Now you're in the public comment zone. What follows is not Armenian Medical Network's stuff; it comes from other people and we don't vouch for it. A reminder: By using this Web site you agree to accept our Terms of Service. Click here to read the Rules of Engagement.

There are no comments for this entry yet. [ + Comment here + ]