TrendGrowing interest in antivirals
Remember this scene from “The Graduate”:
Mr. McGuire [Walter Brooke]: I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin [Dustin Hoffman]: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
If Benjamin were to graduate in 2006 rather than 1968, we are not quite sure that Mr. McGuire would have said “Antivirals”rather than “Plastics,”but he just might have. Indeed, scientists at U.S. federal health institutes, universities, and drug companies say that there is a surge of interest in finding treatments for viral infections, fueled by fears of a global flu epidemic and bioterror attacks. What a change this is: It was not that long ago that disease researchers hardly ever heard from drug development companies, or had their phone calls returned. Now these researchers regularly get calls from companies hoping to forge partnerships in the quest to discover antiviral medicines.
The fear of the avian flu has provided an added impetus, but the campaign against bioterrorism has boosted research on viruses, leading the U.S. government in the past five years to more than double spending on the war against deadly germs of all kinds. This is a major change, as medicines to fight viral infections have been a neglected aspect of drug research. The reason for the neglect is straightforward: It has always been easier to find antibiotics such as penicillin to fight bacteria, because they occur naturally wherever bacteria live, such as in the soil. Antivirals are a more complicated proposition, because they have to be made in the lab, and there is always risk of collateral damage: Viruses invade human cells, so the drugs developed to fight viruses must be so designed so as not to damage the cell further.
Bioterror, avian flu — and the persistence of AIDS — have now convinced the pharmaceutical companies that antivirals make good medical sense, but also make good business sense. Just one example: Swiss company Roche Pharmaceuticals saw revenue from its flu pill Tamiflu increase more than five-fold in a single year — from $229 million in global sales in 2004 to $1.2 billion a year later. Consulting group Frost & Sullivan last week released a forecast predicting that the U.S. market for drugs against hepatitis B and C will increase from about $2.2 billion last year to nearly $4.8 billion in 2012.
Some infectious disease specialists say that, so far, it is mainly small research companies that have displayed the greatest enthusiasm for antivirals. Big drug companies, in the meantime, remain mainly interested in developing blockbuster drugs against chronic conditions. Still, some major pharmaceutical companies have made a commitment to developing medications for viral infections. Roche, for example, has scientists studying HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and the human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease.
-read more in Stephen Smith’s International Herald Tribune report
