Roche to Detail Tamiflu Plans as Bird Flu Fight Shifts Focus March 15 (Bloomberg) — Roche Holding AG, the Swiss maker of Tamiflu, is stepping up production and testing of the potential avian flu treatment as global health experts push a new strategy to fight the growing threat of a deadly pandemic.
Health officials worldwide are focusing on a “rapid response and containment” policy, which they hope will stop any outbreak in humans, Keiji Fukuda, coordinator of the Global Influenza Program, said at a press conference last week.
“The basic idea of this strategy is to try to identify when we first see a pandemic virus emerge that is new and can pass easily from person to person and then to try to contain it,” he said. “Basically, to try to stop a pandemic before it can expand and become a pandemic.”
Groups such as the World Health Organization first focused on trying to control the H5N1 disease in animals and then on urging “pandemic preparedness,” Fukuda said. Medicines such as Tamiflu and GlaxoSmithKline Plc’s Relenza may slow the spread of the disease, which has killed at least 98 of 177 people infected since late 2003, when used quickly after an outbreak is detected.
Roche will give more details tomorrow on production plans and partners and on a research collaboration initiative on H5N1, Roche spokeswoman Martina Rupp said. The meeting follows last week’s three-day session in Geneva on the WHO’s new strategy.
Roche, which sold 1.6 billion Swiss francs ($1.23 billion) worth of Tamiflu last year, is trying to increase access to the drug to ease political pressure to give up the treatment’s patents so more can be made in case of an avian influenza outbreak. Roche has donated more than 5 million doses of the medicine to the World Health Organization.
Production Doubled
Roche doubled its own production capacity for Tamiflu in 2004 and 2005 and will be able to produce more than 300 million doses a year by 2007. Roche said it has established “close relationships” with 50 suppliers. Roche said in December it will let India’s Hetero Drugs Ltd. and China-based Shanghai Pharmaceuticals make the medicine.
The rate of infections in humans has increased this year as the virus spread to more parts of Asia, and to Africa, Europe and the Middle East.
The virus has infected an average of three people a week this year, killing an average of two a week. Last year, 23 cases, including 14 fatalities, were reported in the first 10 weeks.
SARS, Models
Fukuda cites local success in containing an outbreak of H5N1 in Hong Kong in 1997 and the ability to contain the outbreak of the SARS virus as some of the reasons flu coordinators decided to try the new approach.
Research suggesting that use of medications that could slow the spread of disease was another incentive for pursuing a strategy of containment, Fukuda said,
“If it is possible to try and stop the pandemic, there’s simply no reason not to do that,” he said. “That was really the final thing which pushed us ahead to go ahead with this project.”
Tamiflu, which has been approved to treat seasonal flu, has been shown in laboratory and animal experiments to fight the H5N1 avian influenza. Studies published in the journals Science and Nature last year suggested that an international stockpile of 100,000 to 3 million doses of the medicine might help halt a human outbreak of bird flu in Asia.
In the models, outbreaks were most controllable by Tamiflu and isolation measures when the average infected person was likely to infect fewer than 1.6 to 1.8 other people, according to studies carried out at Imperial College London and Emory University in Atlanta.
Never Attempted
“This has never been attempted before,” Fukuda said. “There is a very good chance that we will fail and that we will not be able to stop it.”
In a case where one infected person only sickened an average of 1.4 others, the strategy might work if begun as long as 21 days after an outbreak. A virus that spread more quickly might have to be detected in as few as two days to be quelled by drugs, the researchers said.
Roche is trying to increase production of the medicine to ensure that it can supply all that’s needed. The company has been looking for possible production partners and has received more than 200 requests from third parties interested in making Tamiflu under license, Rupp said.
The flu coordinators are working on finalizing their draft version of the containment plan and will post it on the WHO’s Web site at the end of this week, Fukuda said. The organizers will then seek public comment, he said.
Any slowing of the pandemic’s spread may mean that more vaccine can be produced and get to more people, he said.
“Slowing a pandemic as well as building an infrastructure for the future are really important reasons for going ahead even if we don’t succeed in ultimately stopping the emergence of this virus,” he said.
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