Last year, Martin Shkreli bought the US rights to the drug Daraprim. Daraprim is an essential drug in the fight against toxoplasmosis and malaria, it’s on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential drugs, and often used to treat those who have low immune systems (think HIV or chemotherapy patients and pregnant women). He raised the price 500 per cent, from $13.50 to $750. Shkreli has received backlash from many for limiting the accessibility of this drug.
Now, about a year later, a group of Australian schoolboys have been able to produce Daraprim for much less. Year 11 students from Sydney Grammar School, under the supervision of the University of Sydney, began with 17 grams of chlorophenyl acetonitrile and successfully created about 3.7 grams of pyrimethamine (the chemical name for Daraprim) for about $20, that much of the drug is valued at $110,000. Due to the dangerous reagents involved with the patented method of creating pyrimethamine, the Sydney Grammar School boys developed an entirely new way to create the drug.
The question still lingers: will the Sydney Grammar School’s version of pyrimethamine be on sale in the US?
The boys have said that the real world repercussions of their experiment have made them more “excited” and made them feel that their work is “important”. The question still lingers: will the Sydney Grammar School’s version of pyrimethamine be on sale in the US? Currently, no. Turing Pharmaceuticals, the company of which Shkreli is the CEO, can prevent this by using the “closed distribution model”. A way around this is a comparison between the two products, but Turing has to approve this. For now, 50 tablets of 25 milligram doses will be available in Australia for $12.99.
