New herbal malaria treatment is proving hard to sell
Mainland malaria expert Li Guoqiao has come up with a treatment for malaria that takes effect in just 24 hours.
Although he has used it successfully in Cambodia, his goal of launching the first Chinese medicine on the global drug market is proving elusive.
In dosages of two tablets, taken 24 hours apart, Artequick, a combination of artemisinin and piperaquine, kills the Plasmodium falciparum parasite which causes the most deadly form of malaria.
Professor Li's collaborator, Song Jianping , said the new therapy was more effective for poor countries where patients, often illiterate, found it hard to stick to a long treatment regimen.
But Dr Song, who is also general manager of drug developer Artepharm, said Artequick, based on the Chinese herb qinghao or sweet wormwood, was facing technical barriers to its entry to the international market. The market for the medicine is dominated by Novartis, with its Coartem, while Sanofi is developing its Artesunate.
'We cannot accept this [situation] because you only need to take two dosages of our medicine and you have a 97 per cent recovery rate. Coartem takes three days.
'Plus it is not easily absorbed so they are recommending taking it with milk, but where are all these poor people going to get milk?' Dr Song asked.
The World Health Organisation has yet to give its blessing to Artequick and if it does not recommend the drug, Artepharm will not be able to convince international organisations to buy it.
Dr Song said the WHO was holding back its recommendation because Artepharm had yet to meet Good Manufacturing Practices and Good Agriculture Practices standards for Artequick production.
All Chinese drugs faced the same problem, Dr Song said, accusing western drug companies of setting high thresholds that Chinese drugs were unable to cross, leading them to only sell raw materials.
MMV director of clinical development David Ubben said that while China had good GMP laws, the 'devil is in the details'. Dr Ubben said Chinese drug firms lacked quality controllers who dared to stand up to managers and say a batch of substandard medicine could not leave the factory.
Malaria causes 1.5 million to 2.5 million deaths annually or 3,000 deaths per minute, mainly in Africa. Drug companies are developing new medicines because the malaria parasite is becoming resistant to existing drugs.
