India firm shakes up cancer drug market with price cuts
This handout photograph released by Cipla Industries on May 31, 2012, shows Chairman of Indian pharmaceutical firm Cipla Yusuf Hamied as he poses for a portrait in New Delhi on March 10, 2010. – AFP
NEW DELHI: Indian pharmaceutical tycoon Yusuf Hamied revolutionised AIDS treatment more than a decade ago by supplying cut-price drugs to the world’s poor – and now he wants to do the same for cancer.
Hamied, chairman of generic drugs giant Cipla, last month slashed the cost of three medicines to fight brain, kidney and lung cancer in India, making the drugs up to more than four times cheaper.
“I hope we’ll cut prices of many more cancer drugs,” he told AFP, adding that he wants to supply the cheaper drugs to Africa and elsewhere.
“Reducing the price of cancer drugs is a humanitarian move.”
Hamied, 76, was pilloried by Western drug giants 11 years ago when he broke their monopoly by offering to supply life-saving triple therapy AIDS drug cocktails for under $1 a day – one-thirtieth the price of the multinationals.
The firms branded him an intellectual property thief while he accused them of being “global serial killers” whose high prices were costing the lives of AIDS patients.
“What he did was path-breaking. It has been very important in saving lives, and what he is doing with cancer drugs is the same,” said Leena Menghaney, a lawyer with humanitarian group Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders).
In 1972, India made only the process for making drugs patentable, not the drugs themselves.
This meant firms could “reverse-engineer” or change methods used to make medicines and sell them at up to one-fiftieth of US prices.
The legislation gave a huge leg-up to India’s generics industry and gave the nation the nickname “the pharmacy to the Third World”.
But in 2005, India brought its law in line with World Trade Organization (WTO) rules recognising 20-year patents, pushing up the prices of newly launched drugs.
Cipla, India’s fourth largest pharmaceutical company by sales, has been pressing the government to allow widespread use of “compulsory licences”, which are permitted under WTO rules.
The licences allow companies to make existing life-saving drugs to sell in countries where they are otherwise priced out of reach.
India’s first such licence was granted in March to Natco Pharma to produce a generic version of Bayer’s blockbuster kidney cancer drug Nexavar, cutting the price from 28,000 rupees ($500) for a monthly dose to 6,840 rupees.
Ranjit Shahani, who heads the Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India, says widespread compulsory licensing will jeopardise investment in innovative pharmaceuticals.
Bayer has said it will launch a legal challenge to the compulsory licence, and global drugmakers have vowed to oppose the spread of such legislation.
Hamied denied that his latest move was simply an attempt to boost his share in the oncology drugs market, insisting business must be linked to “social responsibility”.
But he said like any other business his company, which has 23 cancer drugs, also wants higher sales.
“I owe it to my shareholders to be pragmatic,” he said.
Born in Lithuania to an Indian Muslim father and a Lithuanian Jewish mother, Hamied was two months old when his parents fled Europe in the 1930s under the threat of Nazi Germany.
He was raised in Mumbai and studied for a doctorate in chemistry at Cambridge University in Britain before joining Cipla, which was founded by his father.
“My father never forced me but chemistry was my best subject,” said Hamied, who became chairman of the company in 1989.
His bold step in offering cheap AIDS drugs turned out to be a smart business move.
Cipla is now the world’s largest AIDS antiretroviral drugs supplier and the publicly-listed company is valued at nearly $5 billion, while business magazine Forbes puts Hamied’s personal fortune at $1.75 billion.
But Hamied said poverty-racked India “can’t afford to divide people into those who can afford life-saving drugs and those who can’t”.
“It needs a pragmatic policy,” he said.
He believes the pharma giants should let emerging market drugmakers make copycat medicines in exchange for small royalties.
Some 95 per cent of Western firms’ profits come from regulated developed markets like Japan, Europe, America, so the pharmaceutical giants “really won’t lose out”, he said.
Even with the reduced price of generic drugs, such medicines are still beyond the reach of many of the world’s poorest, conceded Hamied, who confesses he has his eye on his legacy.
“I want it to be said when I leave this world that ‘he was not just a money-making machine,’” he said.
world power is shifting to asia its power of asia market , i am sufi by my believe so do not confine human in any religion , cost limits , when all u come to understand true philosophy of religion you love not only human being but every creature crated by nature is so precious and vitally important . so love every one respect every one coz man is reflection of God.thanks mr. Hameed so this human cause i salute u.
Some of the discussion here is interesting – especially the praises levied on Hamied. Cipla is a publicly traded business. There are a board of directors and shareholders who make a business decision as to whether enter the cancer market after evaluating the legalities, profit margin etc. It appears from the discussion that Hamied is doing this at a loss – No Sir! They see a profit margin, a thick one, hence the decision.
Let Cipla invest millions (in dollars) in discovering a new drug, and then sell the drug cheap.
Not saying that cheap drugs are unimportant; but this is a business of bringing patent-expired drugs to the market. If not Cipla, some other company will. And that is the whole idea of current patenting laws – boost innovation and competition. Nobody's a saint here.
Yusuf Hamied has done tremendous contribution towards reducing cost of AIDS drug against many challenges he faced from Multinational drug lord. His Company Cipla is a very popular name in Indian pharmaceutical Industry and enjoys immense respect from the public.
Another Indian, a researcher at Stanford University USA, Dr. Bikul Das a very humble man from Gauhati, has discovered the root cause of Cancer. He already found the reason " why should a cancer cell, towards the end of its evolution to become an aggressive cell exhibit features of embryonic stem cells? After all, embryonic stem cell creates life, whereas aggressive cancer cell kills life ?" His this understanding make him to understand "I am focusing on developing an appropriate experimental system to study the stable vs unstable state of stemness state"
So days are not to far when we can found a suitable drug/ therapy to eradicate cancer.
We are proud of you , Dr. Bikul Das & Mr. Yusuf Hamied
Yusuf Hamied has done tremendous contribution towards reducing the cost of AIDS drug against many challenges he faced from Multinational drug lord. His Company Cipla is a very popular name in Indian pharmaceutical Industry and enjoys immense respect from the public.
Another Indian, a researcher at Stanford University USA, Dr. Bikul Das a very humble man from Gauhati, has discovered the root cause of Cancer. He already found the reason " why should a cancer cell, towards the end of its evolution to become an aggressive cell exhibit features of embryonic stem cells? After all, embryonic stem cell creates life, whereas aggressive cancer cell kills life ?" His this understanding make him to understand "I am focusing on developing an appropriate experimental system to study the stable vs unstable state of stemness state"
So days are not to far when we can found a suitable drug/ therapy to eradicate cancer.
We are proud of you , Dr. Bikul Das & Mr. Yusuf Hamied
This is a simplistic view of a very complicated problem. It is true that healthcare cannot be for profit alone but it must be remembered that it is a business. The amount of money needed for development of new drugs is so huge that it is not possible to keep costs down. The generic drug market players like Cipla, play a role in reducing costs but they have lesser risks. When a pharma company develops a new molecule and then proceeds towards drug development it does not know whether it will succeed. Infact most attempts are failures, this is the reason the drugs appear overpriced. As Dr.Hamied has stated the regulated drug market in europe,us,japan etc does provide the pharma MNCs with some much needed support. What would be ideal is if we can come up with ways to reduce the costs of drug development and research. I think developing countries can play a role in bringing these costs down, instead of reverse engineering products from pharma MNCs. Companies like Reddy labs in my view were a step in the right direction but have not progressed as rapidly as we would have liked.
this is how you contribute to the society on a bigger scope. well done Sir. Is anyone listening on this side of the border? anyone? (sound of silence)
Everyone is appreciating Dr. Hameid. But I have a question for him: Why he should not part some of his 1.7 billion to help poor people in the name of humanity?? In reality, CIPLA is not inventing any new drugs; they are invented in US or Europe. we are simply coping them and selling them cheaper bcz we don't have R & D costs which runs in hundreds of millions. In fact he is eating others lunch! He is like Robinhood, but Robinhood didn't amass wealth like Dr. Hameid.
He is a Noble ,person in the true sense, its a shame for western Pharma giants , all they care is their profits and not human lives. Shame on them.
Why not Pakistan is also taking profit of great person like Dr.Haimde.
I have seen him from last 25 years, how he has grown from a small company to a big giant Cipla.
It makes me feel that greatness has no boundries , such great human beings can exist any where in this world.