News (Updated January 31,
2004)
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Wed Jan 28, 5:20 PM ET
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By Lisa Richwine
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A nonprofit company will ask the U.S. government on Thursday to grant licenses for production of cheaper, generic versions of an AIDS drug and a blockbuster glaucoma medicine that are still protected by patents.
Washington-based Essential Inventions Inc. said the drugs, Abbott Laboratories Inc.'s AIDS medicine Norvir and Pfizer Inc.'s glaucoma treatment Xalatan, were developed with support from taxpayer funds and now are being sold at unreasonable prices.
The nonprofit firm, founded this month by consumer activist James Love, will file complaints to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson alleging "abusive prices of government-funded medicines," according to a statement posted on the Web site of the Consumer Project on Technology, headed by Love.
Essential Inventions says the health secretary, under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, can provide licenses to other producers of patented medicines when needed for public health, or because the patent holder has failed to make the product available on reasonable terms.
Norvir, known generically as ritonavir, is a protease inhibitor used to fight the HIV virus that causes AIDS.
Last December, Abbott raised Norvir's price five-fold to nearly $8,000 a year for a 200-milligram "booster" dose used to make other AIDS drugs more effective, Essential Inventions said.
Xalatan is the world's best-selling treatment for glaucoma, which can cause blindness. Sales in 2003 topped $1 billion.
The drug's U.S. price generally is between two and five times higher than prices in Canada and Europe, Essential Inventions said. One U.S. pharmacy sells Xalatan for $60 for a four-to-six-week supply.
Spokespeople for Pfizer and Abbott were not immediately available for comment.
Development of both drugs was supported in part by grants from the federal National Institutes of Health
A spokesman for Thompson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The nonprofit firm said it has suppliers ready to manufacture generic versions of Norvir and Xalatan, known generically as latanoprost, at "highly reduced" prices to U.S. consumers.
The company's request will ask the health secretary to require any generic producers to contribute to funds for new medicine development, a move aimed at relieving concerns that generic competition would drain the research budgets of brand-name drug makers.
| Press Release | Source: Stratus Research Labs, Inc. |
Friday January 30, 11:36 am ET
Stratus is a privately held company with offices in Houston, Texas, which is developing a promising medication that, to date has shown great merit in combating HIV infections in patients with this disease. In an effort to demonstrate the effectiveness of the medication, Stratus will soon begin human clinical trials in Latin America.
Stratus announces the drug being tested is a novel approach that unlike current treatments does not seek to destroy the HIV virus directly through use of toxic drug "cocktails." Instead the drug known as A-221-HIV targets only the HIV infected cells and places them into a non-dividing state. Once the infected cell has been affected, the HIV virus can no longer replicate itself. The cell lives its normal life cycle until interruption and dies after 14 to 21 days without producing infected copies of itself, thus stopping and reversing the progress of the virus. Once the cell has died, it is removed from the body through normal body processes. This process is nontoxic to the patient and appears to produces little or no side effects.
A-221(TM) inhibitor which is the first protein of its kind has proven effective in-vitro against HIV infected H9 cells and every type of tumor cell line tested, including malignant melanoma, primary breast tumor, lung carcinoma, osteosarcoma, as well as acute myelocytic and acute lymphocytic leukemias. An in-vivo test of A-221(TM) against malignant melanoma in animals produced ninety percent effectiveness, with a third of the melanomas disappearing entirely. Since this protein is not a toxin, the host is not weakened by the treatment and left vulnerable to other opportunistic diseases. This is a nontoxic anti-viral approach that does not utilize any toxic material to destroy the infected cells. Defective cells are placed in a non- dividing state and allowed to die a natural cell death without replication of any kind. This product shows potential in treating the multitudes of cancers and other viruses that plague mankind.
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Wed Jan 28,11:47 PM ET
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WEDNESDAY, Jan. 28 (HealthDayNews) -- The bacterium that causes food poisoning could actually prove a useful ally in the development of better vaccines to ward off a variety of viral diseases such as HIV, smallpox and influenza, claims a University of Michigan study in the January issue of Molecular Pharmaceutics.
The researchers developed a new vaccine formulation that uses an unusual protein derived from the Listeria bacterium.
Live or weakened viruses are typically used in conventional vaccines to boost the body's immune response. This new Listeria vaccine formulation uses viral protein components along with the bacterial protein, reducing the chance of accidental viral infection.
In preliminary animal studies, the scientists found the Listeria vaccine formulation seemed to boost immune response better than a conventional vaccine.
"Today's vaccines are lifesavers, but there's still much room for improvement," study leader Kyung-Dall Lee, an associate professor in the department of pharmaceutical sciences, says in a prepared statement.
"We've shown that vaccines produced using the listeriolyson O protein can dramatically boost the immune response (in mice). We're very excited about this promising vaccine delivery system, which could pave the way for the next generation of safe, more effective vaccines," Lee says.