Bangla generic drugs to the rescue

A buyer's club for generic cystic fibrosis drugs sourced from Bangladesh highlights the country's laudable pharma development

- 

CYSTIC FIBROSIS is in the news again. Not because the rare disease is unknown or that there is no medicine to treat it but for a deal that a US patient help group has entered into with a drug company to secure generic versions of the staggeringly expensive medication to treat the genetic disorder. The real news is that the deal is not with an Indian company as one might expect; it is with a leading Bangladeshi generics manufacturer. When the community-run buyer's club was formed in Seattle in October to help patients around the world to access TRIKO, the generic version of the lifesaving Trikafta, a triple combination therapy developed by US drug giant Vertex Pharmaceuticals, it put the spotlight on Bangladesh's pharma industry, which was set on a radical path of development in the aftermath of the country's bloody secession from Pakistan in 1971.

TRIKO has been developed by Beximco Pharmaceuticals and is expected to be available by the spring of 2026. This is great news for people who suffer from cystic fibrosis (CF), which progressively affects multiple organs, leading to serious respiratory issues and malnutrition. Delayed diagnosis and lack of treatment contribute to an average life expectancy of less than 20 years. The tragedy is that although medication is available, the triple combination therapy is simply unaffordable for the great majority of patients in low- and middle-income countries because of the staggering price. The tab for a year's treatment with Trikafta comes to US $325,300. Beximco will offer it for $12,775 for an adult per year and $6,387.50 for a child per year. The Dhaka-based company is also separately launching BexDeco, a generic version of ivacaftor, one of the components of TRIKO, at a fraction of its price. Beximco was approached by the patient community in the US to work on a more affordable generic version and it has come up trumps with a combination therapy 96 per cent cheaper than the original drug.