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Firm Seeks License for Pfizer, Abbott Drugs
Wed January 28, 2004 
Reuters 
By Lisa Richwine 

	WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A nonprofit company will ask the U.S. government on Thursday to grant licenses for production of cheaper, generic versions of an AIDS drug and a blockbuster glaucoma medicine that are still protected by patents. 

Washington-based Essential Inventions Inc. said the drugs, Abbott Laboratories Inc.'s AIDS medicine Norvir and Pfizer Inc.'s glaucoma treatment Xalatan, were developed with support from taxpayer funds and now are being sold at unreasonable prices. 

The nonprofit firm, founded this month by consumer activist James Love, will file complaints to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson alleging "abusive prices of government-funded medicines," according to a statement posted on the Web site of the Consumer Project on Technology, headed by Love. 

Essential Inventions says the health secretary, under the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act, can provide licenses to other producers of patented medicines when needed for public health, or because the patent holder has failed to make the product available on reasonable terms. 

Norvir, known generically as ritonavir, is a protease inhibitor used to fight the HIV virus that causes AIDS. 
	
Last December, Abbott raised Norvir's price five-fold to nearly $8,000 a year for a 200-milligram "booster" dose used to make other AIDS drugs more effective, Essential Inventions said. 

Xalatan is the world's best-selling treatment for glaucoma, which can cause blindness. Sales in 2003 topped $1 billion. 

The drug's U.S. price generally is two to five times higher than in Canada and Europe, Essential Inventions said. One U.S. pharmacy sells Xalatan for $60 for a four-to-six-week supply. 

Abbott spokeswoman Ann Fahey-Widman said the nonprofit's petition was "completely without merit and contains gross misinformation." 

The company did hike Norvir's price to $8.57 for 100 milligrams, the most common daily dose, from $1.71, but it is still the lowest-cost drug in its class, she said. 

Public assistance programs such as Medicaid can buy at the old price, and anyone without public aid or private insurance can get Norvir for free, she said.

The only government money that may have contributed to Norvir was a $3 million federal grant in 1988 for "very early discovery work" for Abbott's entire HIV program at the time, she said. Even if all of that funding went to Norvir, the $3 million would represent less than 1 percent of the total spending by Abbott and the government, she said. 

Representatives for Pfizer and Thompson could not immediately be reached for comment. 

The nonprofit firm said it has suppliers ready to manufacture generic versions of Norvir and Xalatan, known generically as latanoprost, at "highly reduced" prices to U.S. consumers. 

The company will ask the health secretary to require any generic producers to contribute to funds for new medicine development, a move aimed at relieving concerns that generic competition would drain the research budgets of brand-name drug makers. 

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