Chinese company starts mass producing Gilead coronavirus drug
pharmafile | February 12, 2020 | News story | Research and Development | Ebola, Wuhan, Wuhan Coronavirus, china coronavirus
A drugmaker in China said it has started mass producing Gilead Sciences Ebola drug that has the potential to fight the coronavirus.
It will be developed by BrightGene Bio-Medical Technology. They said in a statement, filed to the Shanghai Stock Exchange,it has the technology to synthesize the active pharmaceutical ingredients of remdesivir, Gilead’s drug that is a leading candidate to treat the coronavirus.
However, they may be an infringing on Gilead’s intellectual property. BrightGene has said it intends to license the drug but this has not been approved. It comes a week after Chinese researchers fired a patent for a drug to treat coronavirus.
The researchers are currently testing remdesivir on 761 patients in clinical trials in Wuhan. If BrightGene does get the license to patent the drug, it will need to conduct more trials and get regulatory approval to sell it.
The drug successfully treated a 35 year old American man with the coronavirus in January, and Gilead has been providing the treatment to Chinese researchers for free. Gilead had previously stockpiled the drug for the Ebola outbreak in 2014, but it failed its clinical trial.
Conor Kavanagh
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