January 3, 2003NEW DELHI, India (AP) -- Medical scientists from India and abroad met Friday to explore making cheaper medicines for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis - a disease afflicting more than 50 million people worldwide.
At a symposium in the Indian capital, the scientists were discussing the possibility of cheaply producing a drug to block an immune system protein called tumor necrosis factor, or TNF, which causes much of the pain and inflammation in patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis.
Two U.S.-based companies -- Johnson & Johnson and American Home Products -- have been manufacturing such anti-TNF drugs, but not many patients can afford the patented medicines, which cost more than US$10,000 per person annually.
Only 300,000 people use these two drugs - Remicade and Enbrel -- and their annual sales top US$2.5 billion, said Dr. Ravinder N. Maini, head of rheumatology at London's Imperial College of Science.
The drugs, which became commercial in 1998 after years of research, are very effective and constitute the only treatment for patients who have stopped responding to standard therapy. Nearly 20 percent of arthritis sufferers do not respond to standard treatment, and their numbers are on the rise.
But the use of the drugs is limited to the United States and some parts of Europe, said Maini, whose pioneering research on TNF won him and his colleague, Dr. Marc Feldmann, the Crafoord prize of the Royal Swedish Academy Sciences.
Maini said he wants some pharmaceutical company to build on the research findings and develop a cheaper drug, which will make this improved treatment for rheumatoid arthritis available worldwide.
Ranbaxy Laboratories, India's top pharmaceutical company and organizer of the symposium, may be a prospective bidder for using Maini's research findings. But the head of the company's research and development division declined to comment.
Maini said India has the capacity to produce the drug at low cost, but it requires a big financial commitment.
The drug can also be manufactured at a low cost if its base is shifted from animal proteins, sourced from mice, to plants, said Dr. Rainer Fischer of Germany, another symposium participant. But Fischer said research on the possibility of using plants was at a very early stage and would take another three to five years to come to any definite conclusion.
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