PharmAsia News: Medivir Transfers HIV Drug Alovudine License To Beijing Mefuvir

SHANGHAI – Sweden-based Medivir AB will transfer its license and intellectual property for its HIV drug Alovudine (MIV-310) to subsidiary Beijing Mefuvir, Medivir announced Dec. 21.

The license rights of the compound were recently returned by Presidio Pharmaceuticals to Medivir.

Under the terms of the agreement, Mefuvir will finance clinical development toward registration in Asia for the nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor for treating patients infected with multi-resistant HIV. Mefuvir will also have marketing rights for Asia, excluding Japan, and Medivir will retain marketing rights in the rest of the world.

“MIV-310 has, in Phase II clinical trials, shown remarkable potency against multi-drug resistant HIV,” Medivir HIV Franchise AB CEO Bo Öberg said. “In laboratory experiments, the combination of MIV-310 and AZT [Zidovudine] has shown synergistic effects against HIV and at the same time, antagonistic toxicity.”

Medivir HIV Franchise AB is a subsidiary company of Huddinge, Sweden-based Medivir AB, which administers a group of polymerase projects, of which MIV-310 is a part.

“The possibility to use combination tablets with MIV-310 and AZT is of great interest for its convenience of dosing and low risk for resistance development,” Zhang Wenyao, chaiman of the board of Tianjin Human-Care Latex and Beijing Mefuvir Medicinal Science, said.

Beijing Mefuvir Medicinal Technology is a subsidiary of Tianjin Human-Care Latex Corporation, one of the largest condom manufacturers in China.

Mefuvir told PharmAsia News that it would not comment on the MIV-310 license deal with Medivir.

In August 2007, Mefuvir licensed anti-HIV non-nucleoside compound MIV-160 from Medivir to develop it for HIV prophylactic and therapeutic use.

Medivir has worldwide marketing rights for MIV-160, while Mefuvir holds them for China, Taiwan and Macau.

MIV-160 is used as a vaginal microbicide formulation for preventing HIV transmission and for the treatment of patients with HIV. It has been shown to be effective against certain resistant strains of HIV.

According to statistics from China’s National Center for AIDs/STD Control and Prevention, by the end of 2007, there were roughly 70, 0000 HIV carriers and AIDS patients in China.

“HIV therapy is quite expensive in China, and [very] few people are able to receive the treatment,” Xia Qian, an analyst at Beijing-based Orient Health E-commerce, told PharmAsia News.

Free HIV treatment in China covers 1,190 counties, where only 39,298 AIDS patients are receiving free antiretroviral treatment.

“In China most of the anti HIV drugs are generic and domestic, and some of them are made from traditional Chinese medicine,” said Xia. “At present, domestic pharmaceutical companies only produce six kinds of generic AIDS antiviral drugs including AZT.”

– Ying Huang (pharmasia@elsevier.com)