Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia - Friday December 18, 1998
Jonathan Birt

Glaxo said the new treatment, which helps block the AIDS virus from replicating, could slash the number of pills patients are obliged to swallow every day when taken in combination with existing drugs.

Ziagen, part of a class of drugs known as nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTI), was given an accelerated review by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is the 15th anti-HIV drug to have been approved in the U.S.

Known generically as abacavir, Ziagen will increase the number of combinations of drugs available to doctors, helping counter the virus's growing ability to resist existing treatments.

Combination therapy has led to dramatic falls in deaths from AIDS in western countries. However, with a wholesale price tag in the U.S. of $9.70 a day, Ziagen will widen the chasm between rich countries and the developing world, which account for well over 90 percent of all cases of HIV and where price has put such dramatic improvements in survival out of reach.

Glaxo already has two reverse transcriptase inhibitors on the market -- Retrovir, the first-ever drug to be targeted at AIDS, and Epivir. Amprenavir, its first protease inhibitor -- part of a powerful class of drugs that revolutionised treatment of the disease -- is currently being considered by regulators in Europe and the U.S.

Ziagen is the first anti-HIV drug to have been tested in children from an early stage and also avoids some of the stringent dietary restrictions needed for other anti-HIV drugs to work.

But analysts said it is being launched into an increasingly crowded market, with Roche Holdings AG , Bristol Myers Squibb Co (NYSE:BMY - news), Merck and Co (NYSE:MRK - news) and Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT - news) all aggressive players.

A recent gloomy report from Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, which forecast flat growth for the anti-HIV market overall as western infection rates level off, forecast sales of 280 million pounds a year for Ziagen by 2002, compared with 390 million pounds for Epivir and 640 million pounds for Combivir, a tablet which combines Epivir and Retrovir.

However, analysts at Greig Middleton have forecast that Glaxo's two new products would help Glaxo Wellcome retain leadership in a fast-growing AIDS and HIV market, maintaining market share of around 40 percent. The brokerage predicted the anti-HIV market would grow to 6.3 billion pounds a year by 2004 from 1.7 billion in 1997.
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