Wyeth and Roche share top drug innovation award
pharmafile | September 23, 2004 | News story | |Â Â prix galienÂ
Wyeth and Roche have shared the honours at this year’s UK Prix Galien awards for innovative and beneficial new medicines.
Wyeth’s conjugate pneumococcal vaccine Prevenar shared the award with Roche’s HIV therapy Fuzeon (enfuvirtide) presented at a Houses of Parliament dinner hosted by Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.
Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, chairman of NICE, who heads the Prix Galien judging panel, said: “The panel was impressed by the potential impact that Prevenar will have in preventing serious infection in young children and infants.”
Sir Michael said Roche’s Fuzeon had equally impressed the panel with the results of clinical trials and complex manufacturing issues involved.
The drug is the first of a new class of antiretroviral drugs, which prevents the HIV virus entering the cell, rather than acting inside the cell as with other HIV therapies. For patients who have become resistant to other therapies this offers a new avenue of treatment.
Prevenar is already licensed in the US for use in infants and young children aged two months to five years, to treat life-threatening pneumococcal diseases such as meningitis, septicaemia and pneumonia, but has not yet been approved for routine use for these conditions in the UK.
Pneumococcal diseases are caused by the bacterium Streptococcus pneumoniae, and are responsible for the deaths of about 50 babies and young children in the UK each year.
Wyeth and leading meningitis charities said they hoped the award would help speed up the vaccine’s inclusion in the UK’s routine childhood immunisation schedule.
“Prevenar represents a significant breakthrough in the prevention of serious childhood disease,” said Kevin James, Wyeth’s managing director in the UK and Ireland.
“Studies are currently being carried out by the Health Protection Agency to include Prevenar in the routine childhood immunisation schedule. Once these are completed, we anticipate that the Department of Health will move as quickly as possible to introduce the vaccine on a routine basis for all infants and young children.”
“This award is good news for the continuing fight against meningitis and septicaemia,” said Julia Warren, head of communications at the Meningitis Research Foundation.
“We’re hopeful that pneumococcal vaccination will soon be routinely available to protect all babies and young children from these dreadful diseases.”
Meningitis Trust chief executive Philip Kirby added: “Pneumococcal meningitis is a particularly dangerous form of the disease, carrying a greater risk of death or permanent disability than other types of meningitis against which we already vaccinate. All children need to be offered protection, so we welcome the steps to include the vaccine on the routine childhood immunisation programme.”
Originally founded in 1969 by French pharmacist Roland Mehl and adopted in the UK 12 years ago the Prix Galien – named after ‘father of modern pharmacology’ Roman philosopher and teacher Claudius Galenus – recognises the pharmaceutical industry’s outstanding achievement in the development of new medicines.
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