As efforts to discover new COVID-19 medicines roll on, President Donald Trump and others this week focused attention on the decades-old malaria drug chloroquine. Bayer got things rolling with an initial donation of the drug, and now Mylan and Teva are taking steps to deliver tens of millions of tablets to U.S. hospitals.
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, a more tolerable formulation, are not approved to treat COVID-19. Still, U.S. authorities are taking steps to make the drugs available quickly following preliminary studies.
In response, Mylan is ramping up production of hydroxychloroquine at its West Virginia Facility. The drugmaker believes it can make 50 million tablets with its current stock and plans to start shipments by mid-April. For its part, Teva is donating 16 million tablets to hospitals around the U.S. The drugmaker plans to give 6 million tablets by the end of the month and another 10 million in the weeks after.
At a press conference Thursday, President Trump said the U.S. is planning to make the malaria drug available by prescription “almost immediately.” Because chloroquine isn’t FDA-approved to treat COVID-19, the president may have been referencing off-label use. It wasn’t immediately clear how the drugs would become widely available in a short time.
Meanwhile, the U.S. outbreak has worsened in recent days. As of Friday, authorities reported more than 13,000 cases in the States.
Mylan and Teva’s announcements follow Bayer’s Thursday donation of 3 million tablets. Together, the commitments represent nearly 70 million tablets to help in the U.S. COVID-19 response. Teva is also looking at its ability to provide supply elsewhere.
Following preliminary reports of the drug’s efficacy, shares for Indian drugmakers Cadila, Torrent and Ipca each jumped, the Economic Times reports. Each drugmaker has the ability to produce the medicine.
While drugmakers aim to boost availability of the med, hydroxychloroquine is already in short supply, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists
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Early studies on the medicine have caught the attention of healthcare experts and market watchers. In France, a professor conducted a small study of the malaria drug in 24 patients with novel coronavirus infections. Of those who received the medicine, only 25% tested positive for the virus after six days, according to en24. Meanwhile, of those who didn’t receive it, 90% tested positive after that timeframe. The French government now plans to run larger studies.
In a study published last month in Nature, authors wrote that “chloroquine is a cheap and a safe drug that has been used for more than 70 years and, therefore, it is potentially clinically applicable against the 2019-nCoV.”
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While there’s certainly more to learn about the potential therapy, chloroquine is just one of several drugs being explored to fight the novel coronavirus pandemic. Across biopharma, drugmakers and collaborators are working on new R&D programs and looking to repurpose existing medicines to treat patients.
Follow these links to read more about drug and vaccine efforts underway.
