July 11, 2005

Nice action by a Pharmaceutical company

From Wired magazine:
A Drug to Eradicate Diarrhea
Napo Pharmaceuticals is poised to launch the first Third World blockbuster drug.

It sounds counterintuitive -- drugs marketed to poor people don't typically lead to big profits. But Lisa Conte, Napo's founder and CEO, hopes not only to bring an affordable diarrhea medication to millions of people in developing nations, but also to reshape the pharmaceutical industry.

The current development model for drug companies is fizzling, she said. More and more prospective blockbuster medications are failing in the final stages of development, and companies will have to consider selling at a lower price to larger numbers of less affluent customers.

"The pharmaceutical industry of the future needs to include emerging and developing economies," Conte said at the Biotechnology Industry Organization annual meeting last month in Philadelphia. "We're not going to be able to enjoy the pricing we have in the past."
And the business model in question:
Last Thursday, Napo announced a deal with Glenmark in India to develop and commercialize Crofelemer as a pediatric and acute infectious diarrhea treatment. Napo signed a similar deal on June 15 with Asiapharm in China.

The deals bypass the typical pharmaceutical approach: Target rich people and charge a high price. Under that model, drugs typically are available in the developing world about 15 years after they've been introduced in premium-price markets like North America and Europe, when patents have expired or companies can afford to distribute excess drugs at a loss.

This is one of the first times a drug will be introduced in poorer markets.
And the drug in question:
Crofelemer comes from the South American tree croton lechleri, which is known by locals as dragon's blood because a machete to its bark brings a blood-like ooze. The extract can treat diarrhea, but too much of it can also make the patient sick. Shaman researchers isolated a molecule from the extract that can be given in larger doses.

Indigenous people "led us to a situation where we could make and improve a pharmaceutical product as far as safety and efficacy and get it back to the population that provided the information," Conte said.

Crofelemer has an advantage over other treatments such as Immodium. While drugs like Immodium are absorbed into the blood and distributed throughout the body, Crofelemer acts locally only in the gut, preventing interactions with other drugs the patient might be taking.

Also, "anti-motility" drugs like Immodium slow down flow of material through the intestine. While this stops diarrhea, it also allows whatever toxin is causing the diarrhea to linger in the body longer, giving it an extra opportunity to infect its host. That's why children, whose immune systems are not fully developed, as well as adult patients with immune problems like AIDS, can't take anti-motility medications.

Crofelemer instead stops the flow of excess water, which makes it possibly the first effective treatment for children and AIDS patients.
Interesting... The article doesn't mention if Napo is going through FDA approval for use in the USA. This is a big hurdle and costs a lot of money. It is not a bad business model to market volume especially if the cost of entry is not that high. Dehydration is a major killer -- many diseases: AIDS, Cholera etc... cause massive problems and with no clean source of water, the patient is open to all sorts of secondary problems with other diseases and parasites. This will be interesting to watch. Posted by DaveH at July 11, 2005 5:57 PM
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