| Pfizer India had its biggest rise in four years after winning a patent for its AIDS drug Selzentry (Maraviroc) in India, home to 2.5 million HIV patients.
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| The shares surged by 7.68 per cent on the Bombay Stock Exchange to close at Rs 772.25 from the previous close of Rs 717.20.
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| Maraviroc, regarded as an important salvage therapy for patients, who do not respond to other HIV drugs, is the first in a new class of oral HIV medicines developed in the last 10 years.
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| Pfizer is believed to be the first multinational company to get a patent in India for the new-generation HIV/AIDS drugs.
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| Recently, the Chennai patent office had granted a patent for Roche’s Valcyte (Valganciclovir), indicated to treat the symptoms of cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis, an infection in the eyes of people with AIDS.
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| Valganciclovir will not cure this eye infection, but it may help to keep the symptoms from becoming worse. Patient groups are opposing the patent granted to Valcyte.
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| Bloomberg adds: Winning a patent helps Pfizer sell the drug free from competition from low-cost copies made by generic drugmakers. Still, branded treatments are too expensive for most patients in India, who have the virus that causes AIDS.
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| Pfizer’s Maraviroc, the generic name for Selzentry, is a second-line treatment for HIV. The treatments are typically more expensive than older drugs used in initial therapies, increasing the economic burden for governments.
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| An Indian agency last month said it was considering treating as many as 2,000 HIV patients with medicines that fight drug-resistant viruses starting next year.
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| Fewer than 150,000 people in India receive HIV-fighting medicines through clinics, according to Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
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| Improved data collection by government agencies in India has helped reduce the number of people carrying the HIV virus by 3 million in the past year, UNAIDS, which coordinates global AIDS relief efforts through the United Nations, said on November 20.
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| Selzentry works against AIDS by blocking a protein on the surface of cells in the immune system that HIV uses to enter and kill the cells. |
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