The story behind Ranbaxy’s new anti-malarial drug

From the previous post about Ranbaxy’s new anti-malarial drug, we know that Synriam is a fixed-dose combination of two known molecules, arterolane maleate and piperquine phosphate. The highlight of the media coverage has been to call this India’s first new drug, which isn’t entirely correct. What makes Synriam special, though, is that it is the first ever drug based on arterolane, a cheaper and better alternative to what is currently available.

Credit: InPharma

Before we look at arterolane, let’s take a quick look at malaria and anti-malarial drugs. According to a World Health Organization (WHO) report, every year 250 million new cases of malaria are reported and it causes 800,000 deaths. It is the biggest killer among the diseases that affect children less than 5-years of age. Anti-malarial drugs have existed for over 300 years, but it is only in the last century that there has been a rise in drug-resistance among the parasites responsible for the disease. This spurred research into developing new drugs and therapies.

One key finding from the increased attention that malaria received was the role of combination therapy. It was found that a judicious combination of drugs could help delay the development of resistance to drugs. To ensure that the new drugs that have been developed do not develop resistance, according to WHO guidelines, the artemisinin class of drugs must always be used in combination with other drugs. Arterolane falls in that class.

Funded by a Swiss non-profit, Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV), arterolane (codenamed OZ277) was revealed in 2004 in a paper published in Nature. It was developed as part of a collaborative drug discovery project that consisted of researchers in the US, the UK, Switzerland and Australia. The aim of the project was to discover a new chemical entity (NCE) that could overcome the limitations of artemisinin, a widely-used antimalarial drug.

Among the many limitations of artemisinin is its price. It is produced from a plant-based source, making it an expensive solution to a poor man’s disease. Arterolane, on the other hand, can be synthesised from commercial chemicals and more cheaply (As a side, arterolane also has one of the funkiest chemical structures among drug molecules). With this molecule, MMV had achieved its goals of finding an NCE with desired qualities, but without further development through clinical trials, it would not have become a marketable drug. That is when Ranbaxy entered the scene. MMV tied up with Ranbaxy in 2003 and supported the development of the drug up until 2007.

According to LiveMint, MMV decided to stop funding the project after it reviewed preliminary data and other portfolio priorities. According to results that were presented at a conference in 2006, MMV found that results of Ranbaxy’s trials were not very satisfactory compared to other drug candidates available in the agency’s many collaborative projects. By this time, Ranbaxy had spent about $16 million. Despite losing MMV’s support, it planned to continue the development of the drug.

The IP-related issues surrounding arterolane remain unclear. In a conversation with Jonathan Vennerstrom, who led the study that was published in Nature, I was told that MMV owns the patent for arterolane (see here and here). By 2007, given that MMV had lost interest in arterolane might mean that it licensed the molecule to Ranbaxy at a low price.

Looking at the lack of confidence that MMV showed in the drug, in 2007, Ranbaxy was taking a risk by continuing research because there was no guarantee that the final clinical trials would be successful. It deserves credit to have been brave enough to plough in a further $15 million (of which $1 million came from the Department of Science Technology) to bring Synriam to the market. Whether they did that to avoid losses or because they truly believed that Synriam was going to be successful, I am not sure.

The drug is claimed to be more effective than any other drug currently available. The recommended dosage is one pill a day for three days, which is less than other for other drugs. Ranbaxy has also ensured that the price remains low at Rs. 130 for the three-day treatment. It is interesting to note that this is much cheaper than Cipla’s Mefliam Plus, which is priced at Rs. 300. Ranbaxy gets more points also because Mefliam Plus is a combination of artesunate and mefloquine, both of which are known molecules that have been used in different fixed-dose combinations previously.

Although Synriam does not qualify as ‘India’s first new drug’ (because none of its active ingredients were wholly developed in India), Ranbaxy deserves credit for being the first Indian pharmaceutical company to launch an NCE before it was launched anywhere else in the world.

This was published as a guest post on SpicyIP's blog. SpicyIP aims to be a leading repository of resources pertaining to Indian intellectual property (IP) law and policy.