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news.Switzerland-based Roche has decided to discontinue its research on HIV drugs. It has terminated its HIV program that included compounds which were targeting two different ways to attack HIV.
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The move to abandon HIV research is said to be largely in line with Roche’s strategic decision to focus only on medicines that provide a significant improvement to existing rival drugs available in the market.
The Financial Times quoted Jenny Edge-Dallas, global leader for Roche’s HIV Franchise, as saying: “While we had initially been hopeful about their potential, we now have concluded that none would provide a true incremental benefit for patients compared to medicines currently on the market.”
However, the company said that it will continue to manufacture the medicines, as well as molecular diagnostics for HIV and other treatments for conditions with which HIV patients are often infected.
In 2007, Roche’s three HIV medicines – Fuzeon, Viracept and Invirase – fetched only $157 million in sales, giving the company a small share of global sales compared to the sales of its rivals Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead and GlaxoSmithKline, revealed the Financial Times.