PARIS: A new vaccine-like HIV medicine that presently costs over $40,000 per person a year could be made for as little as $40, researchers said on Tuesday.
The antiretroviral drug Lenacapavir, made by US pharmaceutical company Gilead, has been hailed as a game-changer in the fight against HIV.
Early trials have proved the treatment is 100 per cent effective in preventing HIV infection. The new medicine needs to be injected twice a year, making it easier to administer than the current treatment requiring daily pills.
“It’s like having a vaccine basically,” Andrew Hill, a researcher at the UK’s Liverpool University, told Western media.
The treatment currently costs HIV patients over $40,000 a year in a number of countries including Australia, France, Norway and the United States.
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New research, which Hill presented at the International AIDS Conference in Munich on Tuesday, discussed how much the cost of manufacturing the drug could come down if Gilead permitted cheaper generic versions to be made.
According to the research, which has not been reviewed a year’s worth of the medicine could be made for as little as $40 which is 1,000 times less than the current price. This price was based on production volumes equal to providing treatment to 10 million people.
Hill emphasised that if the new medicine is given to people at high risk of contracting HIV it could shut down HIV transmission. “We could actually control the epidemic.”
According to the World Health Organization last year there were 1.3 million new HIV infections, while 39 million people are living with the virus.
He said to evaluate the cost, the researchers studied shipments of raw materials of the new drug and spoke to large generic manufacturers in China and India.
The expert said the team of international researchers has been proven right about similar estimates in the past. A decade ago, the team said that the cost of manufacturing Gilead’s hepatitis C drug then priced at $84,000 a patient could drop to $100 if generics were allowed. “Now it costs just under $40 to cure Hepatitis C,” Hill said.
