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AIDS drug priced at $20,000
BASEL, Switzerland (CNN) -- Switzerland's Roche Holding has priced on Monday its new HIV drug Fuzeon at 18,980 euros ($20,570) a year. The Swiss drug company's decision to price daily treatment at 52 euros is likely to fuel more controversy about the cost of AIDS drugs in poor countries. Roche and its rivals were forced to slash the price of AIDS drugs in May 2000 after an outcry from governments and charity groups. But Roche said Fuzeon, also known as T-20, was expensive because the drug was one of the most complex and challenging molecules ever chemically manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry and took more than 100 steps to produce. "The price reflects the structural complexity of Fuzeon and its highly sophisticated manufacturing process, " William Burns, head of Roche Pharmaceuticals, said in a statement. "Fuzeon is the most clinically advanced agent of fusion inhibitors, a completely new class of drugs. With its unique mechanism of action, Fuzeon represents the first significant breakthrough in HIV therapy since 1996." Unlike existing drugs that work inside the cell, Fuzeon blocks HIV from entering healthy human immune cells. The drug is aimed at more than 50,000 patients in North America and Europe who are resitant to other AIDS therapies. David Reddy, head of Roche's HIV business, told Reuters Fuzeon had cost 840 million Swiss francs to develop, excluding marketing expenses. More than half of that was accounted for by clinical trials, and the lion's share of the rest reflected investment in specialist manufacturing facilities. Reddy declined to comment on the profit margin that Roche would enjoy on sales of Fuzeon, which it believes could eventually have peak annual sales of up to one billion Swiss francs ($740 million). Fuzeon is expected to win marketing approval from regulators in both Europe and the United States next month. For now, Roche will offer the drug in some European Union countries under a pre-license special-access agreement. Reddy said he did not envisage Fuzeon ever being suitable for use in Africa given the drug's very high cost of production, Reuters reported.
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