Gilead ropes in Indian firms to promote cheaper HIV pills

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Gilead ropes in Indian firms to promote cheaper HIV pills

US-based Gilead Sciences has roped in four Indian pharmaceutical companies to develop and market three new generic HIV/AIDS drugs in over 100 countries. The drugs are currently in final stages of clinical development. CNBC-TV18's Appaji Reddem and Ashwin Mohan delve deeper.

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Excerpts from India Business Hour on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » Ranbaxy Labs BSE | NSE 31/05/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Ranbaxy Labs? Other Stocks in this news Matrix Laboratories | Strides Arcolab |

US-based Gilead Sciences has roped in four Indian pharmaceutical companies - Ranbaxy , Hetero Drugs, Matrix Labs , and Strides to develop and market three new generic HIV/AIDS drugs in over 100 countries. The drugs are currently in final stages of clinical development. CNBC-TV18's Appaji Reddem and Ashwin Mohan delve deeper.

As per the agreement, Gilead will extend technological know-how and consulting services to the four Indian companies and in return, will get 5% royalty on net sales of the new drugs.

Arun K Purohit, vice president of Global Therapy management, Ranbaxy, said, "The license is for three new drugs of Gilead which are phase-III of development. And by getting access to their technology and license to market them products in large number of countries, I think 105 territories."

Gregg Alton, executive vice president at Gilead, said, "We provide them the technology transfer and then it's up to them within their business models, to bring the costs down, within the expenses. Our role ends with technology transfer. We do give some consulting and advises in terms of process of impurities etc."

So what's the USP of the 3 new drugs? Well, they will be one-pill-a-day solution and are expected to be superior to, but cost less than Gilead's existing HIV drugs- Tenofovir and Emtricitabine.

Bhavesh B Shah, vice president of International Marketing, Hetero Drugs, said, "There are a lot of advantages with the product. First time, it is four-in-one combination and first time one pill a day that's where the whole thing is going to be actually looking at. And considering the efficacy, we've to see the economics of scale, how this product costs when we start developing the product with Gilead."

The potential is tremendous and the industry is high on HIV drug development. But as per industry sources, the formulation, stability studies and regulatory permissions will take more than two years for the drugs.

Also watch the accompanying video.

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