AIDS is an infectious disease that endangers human health, and its treatment price enjoys national policy subsidies and should not be subject to market regulation. Recently, the domestic anti-AIDS drug market is bustling with activity.

On Nov. 22, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the world's pharmaceutical giant and the largest foreign pharmaceutical company investing in China, announced that it would officially launch its world's first and only antiretroviral therapy (cocktail therapy) triple combination drug, Triplex Vitamins TM, in China by the end of November.

GlaxoSmithKline claims to be bringing the world's most advanced anti-AIDS drug into China. At the same time, it also announced that in October this year, it had submitted to the State Drug Administration a declaration document for the production of the anti-HIV virus drug bispyribacillin a in China, and that when the market demand reaches the minimum limit of mass production, i.e., about 10,000 tablets, the drug will be put into production at GlaxoSmithKline's production base in Tianjin.

And Bitaidzia is the world's first dual-complex, high-efficiency backbone drug for antiretroviral therapy (cocktail therapy).

September 16, Shanghai Diseno Bio-pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. announced that a new anti-AIDS generics drug that has passed the patent protection period - Desipramine and Bulk - has obtained a new drug certificate and a production approval from the State Pharmaceutical Administration of China (SDA) and will soon be put into production at the Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park. Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park.

In addition, the company's three other generic anti-AIDS drugs - stavudine, zidovudine and nevirapine - have also entered the acceptance stage of the State Drug Administration.

It is reported that a number of other domestic pharmaceutical companies have applied to the State Drug Administration to produce and sell anti-AIDS drugs. For example, Tianfang Pharmaceuticals has declared two drugs, Zidovudine and DDI, and Beijing Shuanglu has declared D4T. It has been reported that there are more than a dozen domestic enterprises lining up to declare Zidovudine in the SDA at present, and if there is no quality and safety problem, these drugs will be approved and marketed sooner or later.

It is reported that in June this year, UNAIDS published a 92-page thematic report, "HIV/AIDS: China's Titanic Crisis Report," a sternly worded report that said AIDS is "growing dramatically" in China. The text even calls out, in red cautionary lines, that the time for action is now!

The Ministry of Health's latest report on China's AIDS prevention and control efforts shows that in the first half of 2002, China reported a 16.7 percent increase in the number of HIV-infected people compared with the same period in 2001, and that although the rate of growth has declined, the cumulative total number of infected people is estimated to have risen to nearly 1 million. According to Dr. Shao Yiming of the Virus and Immunity Research Office of the AIDS Prevention and Control Center of the Ministry of Health, the average incubation period of HIV is eight years.

This makes it clear that China is now facing the first peak in the incidence of AIDS since the country entered a rapid growth period of widespread epidemic in 1994. According to experts' predictions, if active and effective measures are not taken, by 2010, China will have more than 10 million people infected with HIV.

On the issue of rapidly reducing drug prices, Dr. Lv Fan of the Center for AIDS Prevention and Control believes that, compared with other ways, to achieve all domestic production of drugs is a truly effective way. And all domestic pharmaceutical companies on anti-AIDS drugs are playing the price card.

While the price of the drugs has not yet been officially disclosed, almost all domestic anti-AIDS drug makers are claiming that their products are 1/10 the price of their multinational counterparts, and that no matter how much the final price is set, there is no doubt that domestic anti-AIDS drugs have a strong price advantage over imported ones.

But industry insiders point out, AIDS treatment are currently using a variety of drugs combined treatment method, because with a single drug, HIV is easy to produce drug resistance through mutation. Existing antiviral drugs according to the mechanism of action can be divided into nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (such as GlaxoSmithKline zidovudine, lamivudine, Bristol-Myers Squibb production of Huituzi, Serrat), non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (such as Mercer's production of Schidonen) and protease inhibitors (such as Mercer's production of good interest in the patient).

Clinical generally choose one or two reverse transcriptase inhibitors plus a protease inhibitor treatment program, a single drug price reductions can not fully reduce the cost of treatment. Experts also introduced, whether it is "Keto" or dehydroxyinosine and so on are only nucleoside and non-nucleoside drugs, but in the cocktail therapy in the field of protease inhibitors domestic manufacturers have not yet made a mark.

Proteinase inhibitors in the synthesis process is quite difficult, the current foreign marketed protease inhibitors in the country have varying degrees of compounds and preparation process of intellectual property rights issues, the domestic manufacturers can not be imitated for the time being.

Anti-viral treatment needs to be combined, only one drug price reduction, other drugs such as protease inhibitors do not fall, the overall cost is still likely to be on the high side, thus inhibiting the use of medication population. In order to effectively control the serious AIDS epidemic facing our country, the government is now giving the green light to anti-AIDS drugs.

Industry sources analyzed that the government is unlikely to allow companies to have a large profit margin on such products in terms of product pricing. Foreign companies, on the other hand, are constantly launching new drugs to make bigger profits.

As we know, GlaxoSmithKline formally launched its world's first and only cocktail therapy triple-combination drug, Sankhyovit TM, in China; Bristol-Myers Squibb plans to apply for registration of its new protease inhibitor Atazanavir, which was developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb and applied for registration with the FDA by the end of this year;

Abbbott's new-generation protease inhibitor, which was launched on the U.S. and European markets two years ago, is now being marketed in China. "

Abbott's new-generation protease inhibitor, which was launched in Europe and the United States two years ago, is in the process of being registered in China. Moreover, competition will become fiercer in the future as patents on other anti-AIDS drugs expire and domestic companies scramble to copy them.

At that time, anti-AIDS drug companies will not only have to compete with imported drugs, but also face competition from domestic companies. Therefore, the prospects of anti-AIDS drug companies should be cautious, not blindly optimistic.