Scientists’ biotech find could herald cheap pill revolution

SCIENTISTS claim to have found a way to produce medicines at a fraction of the price charged by big drug companies.

The move could enable millions of people in poor countries to be cured of life-threatening diseases.

Two British academics have devised a way of changing the molecular structure of an existing drug to turn it technically into a new medicine which is no longer under a 20-year patent to a multinational drug company and can be made and sold cheaply.

The pair have teamed up with an Indian biotechnology company to manufacture the first drug, to treat hepatitis C, and the Indian government is sponsoring clinical trials in India.

Sunil Shaunak, professor of infectious diseases at Imperial College, London, calls their revolutionary new model “ethical pharmaceuticals”.

Prof. Shaunak is working on the project with his colleague from the London School of Pharmacy, Professor Steve Brocchini.

He said: “The pharmaceutical industry has convinced us that we have to spend billions of pounds to invent each drug.

“We have spent a few million. Yes, it will be a threat to the monopoly.”

Multinational drug companies put the cost of the research and development of a new drug at more than £400 million (€594 million). Professors Shaunak and Brocchini say the cost of theirs will be only a few million pounds.

The pair have been supported by a grant from British medical research charity the Wellcome Trust.

Once the drugs have passed clinical trials and have been licensed in India, the same data could be used to obtain a European licence so they could be sold to European health services as well. But the pair could face legal challenges from drug firms if the medicines are not radically different from those already on the market.