About Sun Pharmaceuticals & Alzheimer's
For Alzheimer's patients and their families who feel the pocketbook strain from high-priced prescription medications, Sun Pharmaceuticals offers some relief. Sun Pharmaceuticals sells a generic equivalent of one commonly prescribed brand name drug used to treat dementia. But making this more economical medicine available to the public is not as simple as obtaining the recipe and starting production.
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History
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Alzheimer's is an incurable degenerative disease of the brain associated with aging. Sufferers experience memory loss, personality changes and decreases in cognitive function. The cause of Alzheimer's is not known, but the disease is characterized by the deposit of proteins in the form of plaque within the brain tissues, and this is thought to somehow contribute to the destruction of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine which is vital to proper brain function. Treatments reduce symptoms and slow the progress of the disease, mainly by inhibiting the destruction of acetylcholine.
Significance
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Alzheimer's research efforts are intense, and drug companies are eager to offer new treatments to patients as soon as safety and efficacy can be established with reasonable certainty. But drug research and development are expensive, so pharmaceutical companies faithfully protect their unique drugs with patents, so that they may earn money through the sale of the drug. Drug sales recoup development costs and then benefit investors. Profitability for investors is important to assuring that investors will continue to make money available for more research and development.
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Function
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When drug patents expire, the drug formulas may be used by other pharmaceutical companies to produce generic equivalents. The active ingredients in generic drugs are identical to the original drug, but the cost is usually lower, since the company producing the generic drug does not bear any of the research and development costs. The production of generic drugs is legal and an ethical business practice, but sometimes disagreements arise over whether a patent has expired or is still enforceable.
Effects
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Sun Pharmaceuticals finds its niche in the Alzheimer's drug market by producing a generic equivalent of Novartis Exelon. Exelon and Sun Pharma's generic equivalent, rivastigmine tartrate, are cholinesterase inhibitors which slow the break down of acetylcholine. The medication is administered orally in a pill. Brand name Exelon is also available in an adhesive skin patch. Rivastigmine and Exelon are prescribed for early to mid-stage Alzheimer's patients, and are also used to treat dementia of Parkinson's disease.
Considerations
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A patent dispute between Novartis and Sun Pharmaceuticals initially slowed the progress of rivastigmine tartrate toward public availability. However, Novartis and Sun Pharmaceuticals reached an out of court settlement in 2007 that allowed Sun to begin U.S. production. Generic rivastigmine is now available for about $0.53 to $0.60 per tablet, as compared to $0.80 to $1.10 per tablet for Exelon.
Theories/Speculation
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Sun Pharmaceuticals and companies like it may be furthering the interests of Alzheimer's patients even without developing new drug formulations. With generic drug sales growing steadily, drug developers seek to hold onto their own share of the market by coming up with more even effective drugs that they can patent. An August 2008, a Market Wire report cites Sun Pharmaceuticals as one of the generic manufacturers that spurs such innovation.
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