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Amid growing panic over a bird flu pandemic, the Swiss pharmaceuticals giant Roche, which holds the rights to the only available influenza drug Tamiflu, has offered to produce the drug jointly with South Korea to head off the threat of a compulsory license that would allow Korean firms to make a generic version.
"Roche has proposed to produce Tamiflu jointly with a Korean pharmaceuticals firm that meets a certain standard,Ħħ the Ministry of Health and Welfare said Wednesday. There are fears that worldwide stocks of Tamiflu would be woefully inadequate to cope with a pandemic if the avian influenza virus mutates and becomes capable of human-to-human infection.
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Health officials disinfect a chicken farm in Hwasoon County, South Jeolla Province as a precaution against bird flu.
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The ministry said the KFDA identified domestic firms capable of manufacturing the flu drug with the help of the Korea Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association. Eleven companies say they are willing to work with Roche, including Dong-A Pharm, Hanmi Pharm and LG Life Science.
Roche has reportedly made the same proposal to the U.S. and Japan.
Meanwhile, a U.S. medical expert says he has found a way of doubling the effectiveness of Tamiflu.
The science journal Nature on Wednesday said Dr. Joe Howton of the Adventist Medical Center in Portland, Oregon proposed doubling the impact of Tamiflu by administering it together with the antibiotic probenecid, which was widely used during World War II.
Howton said data published by Roche in 2002 showed that using probenecid and Tamiflu together doubled the time Tamiflu's active ingredient stays in the blood by delaying its excretion in urine.
The World Health Organization advises governments worldwide to stock up on enough Tamiflu for at least a quarter of their population in case the virus mutates and causes a pandemic. Current supplies are enough to treat only 2 percent of the world population. Korea has stockpiles for around 800,000 people.
Hanmi Pharm director Lee Gwan-soon says several Korean pharmaceutical companies make probenecid, and although inventories of the venerable antibiotic are not large, production can easily be increased.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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