Roche: Tamiflu Capacity Exceeds Orders

By ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS Posted 16 March 2006 @ 06:24 pm EET     Print     Reprint     E-Mail     Comments

BASEL, Switzerland (AP) - Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche Holding AG said Thursday it has greatly increased its capacity to produce the antiviral drug Tamiflu, but that government orders to stockpile it were lagging far behind.

"Our capacity is well in excess of all government orders that we have received to date," said William Burns, chief executive of the Roche Pharma unit. "We stand ready. There should be no holding back."

The drug is regarded as the best initial defense against any human pandemic resulting from a mutation of the deadly bird flu virus.

Burns told reporters that Roche is expanding its global network to produce Tamiflu in nine countries and more than 15 partner companies. By the end of this year, Roche will be able to produce enough Tamiflu to treat 400 million people, he said.

Total government orders and commitments received since 2005 to buy Tamiflu are less than half the amount Roche and its partners will be able to produce in a single year, starting next year, said Burns.

Roche is willing to take some of the risk and make investments without government orders, but sooner or later will have to scale back if the purchases don't pick up, he said.

He noted that the drug has a long, five-year shelf life, so it will help governments in developing their stockpiles.

David Reddy, leader of Roche's influenza task force, said the company still makes its top priority producing the drug for ordinary seasonal flu, but that the demand is much less for that than for the stockpiles in case the H5N1 strain of bird flu changes into a form that easily passes from human to human.

"We don't know when a pandemic will come, but we do know" that seasonal influenza kills 250,000 to 500,000 people each year, Reddy said. Tamiflu was originally designed to combat seasonal flu, and is especially helpful for people such as "the frail elderly" for whom flu vaccine is inappropriate.

So far H5N1 bird flu remains very difficult for humans to catch, and almost all of the 177 cases and 98 deaths confirmed in people since 2003 have been individuals who had close contact with poultry.

Experts, however, have been working on global plans to stop a human pandemic should the virus mutate into a form easily transmitted from human to human. Tamiflu is a large part of that planning.

A fully effective vaccine for a new human virus cannot be developed until the virus emerges and specialists can tailor the vaccine to the new strain.