Roche - Producers of Tamiflu

Roche signs Tamiflu deal with Indian company
By Andrew Jack
Published: December 23 2005 17:26 | Last updated: December 23 2005 17:26

Roche, the Swiss pharmaceutical group, has signed a pioneering deal authorising an Indian drugs company to manufacture and sell its antiviral flu medicine Tamiflu under licence in a number of developing countries.


ADVERTISEMENT




Hetero, based in Hyderabad, becomes the second drug company after Shanghai Pharmaceutical Group to receive a sub-licence that will allow it to sell large volumes of Tamiflu at a price that it chooses.

Roche is under growing pressure to meet escalating global demand at low cost for Tamiflu, the best currently available treatment and potential prophylactic against a future bird flu pandemic.

The Indian deal is important because for the first time it authorises a partner company to produce and sell Tamiflu not only in its home market – as is the case with Shanghai – but also in other less developed and developing countries.

A Roche spokesman said the deal, which initially lasts for two years, will allow Hetero to sell Tamiflu at whatever price it chooses in India and countries where there is no or poor intellectual property protection for the drug. It would allow rapid delivery of 100,000 treatments to the Indian government by Hetero, and an equivalent amount directly by Roche.

He said Hetero would pay a royalty to Roche but would not elaborate on the amount. He said it was relatively modest, to reflect the fact that Roche must also pay a proportion of the revenues to Gilead, the US company that developed Tamiflu and has the original patents.

Hetero said its deal was the first sub-licence granted since India passed new patent protection laws in 2005 in compliance with its commitments when it joined the World Trade Organisation.

Roche also this week received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to provide Tamiflu to children aged 1-12 as a prophylactic.

■Roche UK on Friday clarified that specific coverage rates of 20-40 per cent of a population with Tamiflu to treat a future pandemic reflected practice by individual governments and academic advice, not recommendations from the World Health Organisation as implied in documents it releas-ed to the media and House of Lords in recent weeks.