Not Just Huge Pharma: Biotech Corporations Fighting Over Drug Patents

Barr Pharmaceuticals is lobbying for a US law that would permit the sale of copied medicines created by the biotech market. Barr is dispatching just about a dozen representatives along with a lot of other generic drug lobbyists, to attempt to pass their law by way of each Congress and the Property of Represenatives.

Other biotech providers such as Amgen and Genetech Inc. stand firmly in opposition of the new law. They contest that generating copies of the extremely complicated gene primarily based medication pose a larger health risk than copying the tradition therapies.

According to a report on Bloomberg.com, “the outcome of the fight will decide whether or not generic makers, including Barr and Israel-based Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., can sell competing versions of biotech medicines when they shed patent protection. Generic biotech drugs might reduce prices by 33 %, analysts say.”

Supporters of Barr Pharmaceuticals contend that enabling copies could save the biotech business more than 14 billion dollars in the next ten years. At chemoreception , the biotech sector accounts for 32.8 billion of the 251.8 billion dollars of prescription drug sales to US pharmacies in 2005.

Bloomberg.com also states, “Several biotech medicines carry high price tag tags, and generic versions are probably to decrease costs by 20 % to 30 percent, Elise Wang, an analyst with Citigroup Inc. in New York, mentioned in an interview. One particular of the most highly-priced biotech medicines is Genzyme Corp.’s Cerezyme, a treatment for a rare enzyme disorder that can cost $200,000 a year.”