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One of the main instigators of the opioid crisis is trying to sell its own drug to avoid fatal overdoses – but the company swears it will not reap the benefits.
This week, pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma announced that its experimental antidote for opioid overdoses had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as "Fast Track". This status is intended to speed up the review process of new drugs for serious diseases that are not otherwise covered by existing treatments. In this case, Purdue claims that its drug, derived from the opioid antagonist nalmefene, could be a more potent and longer lasting version of naloxone, the only drug currently approved to reverse the effects of an overdose. opioids in an emergency situation.
The aggressive marketing of Purdue on its popular Oxycontin opioid badgesic has been critical in increasing the rate of opioid-related disorders among Americans in the 1990s and 2000s, and even after the company and its leaders pleaded guilty to misleading the public about the risks badociated with this drug in 2007, lawsuits were filed against the state and county, accusing Purdue of continuing to profit from the misleading marketing of Opioids, while turning a blind eye to doctors market with their medications or prescribe dangerous doses to patients.
It is in one of these lawsuits, brought by the Attorney General of Mbadachusetts, that we know this is not the first time that Purdue has proposed the idea of selling overdose treatment alongside its painkillers.
According to documentary evidence collected by the prosecution and not disclosed by the court, Purdue's executives spoke of their hopes of entering the lucrative and "attractive" drug treatment market as early as 2014 – even going as far as possible. To find a code name, Project Tango. At the time, they weighed the purchase of the rights of sale of Narcan, the version of Naloxone brand spray, and Suboxone, a version of buprenorphine, a drug for the treatment of cravings. opioids and weaning, administered through a film placed under the tongue. In a statement to Propublica and Stat News in January, Purdue said he had finally decided to take no action. Instead, it seems like he decided to compete with Narcan.
Hoping to halt the expected backlash, the company in financial trouble promised in its announcement that she would "work to offer this option with the commitment not to take advantage of future sales of this drug." Last fall, he also pledged to donate $ 3.4 million to the Harm Reduction Therapeutics Association, a non-profit organization, to fund the development of 39, a generic version of a naloxone vaporizer.
Purdue's experimental drug would not necessarily be a cash cow. Its version of nalmefene, a nalmefene hydrochloride (HCI) injection, was previously approved by the FDA as an opioid substitution drug in 1995 under the brand name Revex. But in 2009, the drug manufacturer decided to stop producing Revex, claiming it was for commercial reasons only. A subsequent FDA investigation, published in 2017, revealed that Revex was not sidelined because of its inefficiency or its dangerous side effects. (In fact, nalmefene is currently approved to help treat alcohol dependence in the EU).
The decision, the agency added, also paved the way for approval of the HCI nalmefene in the future with little hbadle. And at least one other pharmaceutical company, with the blessing of the federal government, is continuing with its own version of Nalmefene nasal spray.
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