Potentially massive revenues and reputational luster for Gilead, the $93.4 billion Foster City-based company with 3,200 Bay Area employees.
Five years ago, it sorted through 1,000 chemical compounds to find the new antiviral agent. In 2016, it filed a patent in China for Remdesivir for use against all coronaviruses, which has not yet been issued. Patent protection — and market exclusivity — is the lifeblood of drug companies such as Gilead, creating the incentive to find, test and market a medicine.
But the stakes also are high for the government-run Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, at the epicenter of the outbreak, which asserts it has found a better way to use the drug to save lives.
For now, Gilead is donating the drug in a clinical trial with Chinese doctors to test its safety and effectiveness in nearly 800 infected patients with pneumonia.
If both patents are granted and the drug is approved for use, the profits will be split, predict experts. And the two nations will be linked like twins to future use of the drug, with both teams exerting leverage.
But in surprising twist to the story, on Wednesday a Chinese drug company announced it has copied the Gilead drug and is successfully mass producing its own generic version. BrightGene Bio-Medical Technology did not disclose what efforts, if any, it made to license its imitation version from Gilead.
The race to claim the cure is playing out on a fraught economic landscape.
Source: CNIPR.com
