Later this month, several key patents for HIV medications are set to expire. The sudden opening up of the market could be a boon for companies ready to flood the US market with billions of generic HIV pills.
Recently, Bloomberg profiled one such company in India called Laurus Labs Ltd. With a manufacturing facility the size of 35 football fields, the company is hoping to capitalize on its ability to crank out several key compounds used in HIV drugs.
The big patent expirations in the market will be Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.’s Sustiva and Gilead Sciences’ Viread. Laurus already has a hold on 66 percent of the global market for the chemical used in Sustiva — efavirenz — and on 33 percent of the market for tenofovir, the chemical name for Viread.
With the U.S. market now nearly open for the medications, analysts predict that the company’s revenue will jump $279 million in the current fiscal year to $339 million.
The roughly 1.1 million HIV patients in the U.S. typically take a combination of medications to treat the illness. Despite the potential to tap into this market with generics, Bloomberg notes that companies like Gilead, which rakes in $2.6 billion from HIV drugs, have already begun switching patients to newer medications that are still under patent protection.
And because HIV are often sheltered from the cost of these drugs by various assistance programs, they may be less inclined to demand cheaper generic alternatives.
Nevertheless, Laurus is reportedly gearing up to produce as many as 5 billion tablets of HIV drugs per year, pending U.S. regulatory approval.
