Malaria Cure- Artemisinin

[Venetia]

An Ancient Cure for Malaria


At a glance

Inventor(s): Yiqing Zhou (mainly responsible), Dianxi Ning, Shufen Wang, Deben Ding, Guofu Li, Chengqi Shan, Guangyu Lie (CN)

Invention: Anti-malaria composition (marketed as Coartem)

Sector: Healthcare

Company: Novartis

Fair use

Malaria is the world's most devastating parasitic infection in humans. It kills one person every 30 seconds, most of them children under 5 years of age. There is no vaccine, and drugs need to be cheap - the disease is most rampant in impoverished parts of the globe.

Searching for an inexpensive treatment, Professor Yiqing Zhou and team at the Institute of Microbiology and Epidemiology in Beijing went back to ancient Chinese medicine. After all, malaria has infected humans for over 50 000 years.

Chinese scientists became interested in an old herbal remedy known as Artemisia annua, or "Sweet Wormwood". It was used in China beginning around 168 BC to treat malaria. The herb was re-discovered in 1967 to treat malaria-stricken soldiers during the Vietnam War.

As the active ingredient, Zhou identified a naturally occurring compound called "artemisinin". Zhou mixed the herb with a proven anti-malarial agent, benflumetol, to create a new drug, completed in 1996.

Cheap to manufacture, Zhou's drug is highly effective. It achieves control over malaria-related fever in as little as 24 to 36 hours. Cure rates range at over 96% after only 3-4 days of treatment.

And the clincher is that there is no problematic drug resistance among malaria strains. Though thousands of years old, the herbal ingredient is "new" to current malaria parasites.

Distributed by pharmaceutical company Novartis as "Coartem" since 2001, Zhou's drug has been used in 160 million treatments so far, saving an estimated 450 000 lives. Novartis has been able to constantly lower the price for the drug in cooperation with the WHO and other global foundations.

Read the story behind anti-malarial drugs

[Kritters]

Wow....V~

This is the first time I read something GOOD about a pharma company. thanks.

Sounds like something we should try.

Kritts

[tcmgpt13]

China's malaria wars: the battle over monotherapy - SciDev.Net

Guess the Chinese have a different view of Novarits (just a part of this article):

And there are further suggestions that the WHO's decision favours Novartis, which some claim has made a huge profit out of the Coartem ACT.


Coartem: profitable or not?

Novartis insists that it sells Coartem at cost price and has made no profits out of it.


"They [Chinese monotherapy producers] may think Novartis has made a lot of money out of Coartem, but our company does not think so," says Liu Tianwei of the China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) Group, who represent Novartis in their Coartem licensing deals .
Liu says Novartis produced 33 million doses of Coartem in 2005, nine million of which were sold to the WHO. In 2006 it sold 62 million doses to the WHO, with a sales value of about US$170 million. This year's sales should equal that.


To date, Novartis has invested about US$100 million to expand sales of Coartem, according to Liu.


In 2001 the company reached an agreement with the WHO to sell Coartem at a price of US$2.4 per dose.


"If Novartis wanted to make big profits it should have sold Coartem in private markets, where the price per dose can be US$10," he said.
He added that over the years, the deal has brought profits of approximately 50 million yuan (US$6.5 million) to Chinese companies that supply raw materials to Novartis ― including Kunming.


But the Chinese Ministry of Health has other views.
"Novartis has made huge profits. It sells the drug at a higher price than its cost price," says Yang.


He added that the Swiss company has made about US$100 million from Coartem this year.