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| CHINA: Chinese Company Develops New Drug to Fight HIV/AIDS |
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| A Chinese pharmaceutical maker has developed a new HIV drug that aims to block the virus from entering cells, the China Daily reported today. FusoGen Pharmaceuticals is currently testing the drug, a fusion inhibitor, in clinical trials. Zhou Genfa, FusoGen's chairperson, said the drug is modeled after the US-developed Fuzeon - the first drug in a new class of fusion inhibitors - but employs a different molecular modeling. The drug, which has been registered as a new medicine with China's State Food and Drug Administration, will likely hit the market at the end of next year and will be priced "significantly" lower than Fuzeon, which can cost $20,000 per patient per year, said Zhou. |
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| Chinese drug firms ally against Pfizer |
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| The producers of "Chinese Viagra" have established a joint venture to fend off competition from Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical firm and the original producer of the world's leading anti-impotence drug.
The joint venture has established an office in Beijing and the capital from the shareholders has been invested into the new company. |
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| China to stop using human flu drug on poultry |
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| China has confirmed reports that Chinese poultry farmers have been using the human anti-flu drug amantadine in poultry, which can cause drug-resistant strains of the virus to develop. It says it will stop the practice.
But the controls will be too late for the ¡°Z¡± strain of the H5N1 virus that has spread through southeast Asia. That strain, which has so far killed 54 people and which health officials fear might develop into a human pandemic, is already resistant to the drug.
On 17 June the Washington Post revealed that amantadine has been used in China ¡°since the late 1990s¡± to control and prevent bird flu outbreaks on chicken farms. It quoted Chinese pharmaceutical executives and veterinarians who said the drug was cheap, readily available and ¡°widely used in the entire country¡± both to treat outbreaks and for routine prevention, in the same way that antibiotics are commonly used in livestock.
The investigation followed a report in New Scientist, citing flu expert Robert Webster, of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, US. In it, Webster blamed widespread use of amantadine in feed by Chinese chicken farmers for the occurrence of resistant strains of H5N1 since 2003. |
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