Cipla, one of India's largest drug manufacturers, said it has reverse engineered Roche's Tamiflu and plans to start offering commercial quantities of a copycat flu drug by January. The move is likely to rouse a furious response from Roche, which has seen demand for Tamiflu soar as governments scramble to stockpile a drug that can help protect people from a dreaded avian flu pandemic. Roche has refused to say how much of the drug it is making but has announced that it has been increasing Tamiflu production "eight-fold." In addition, the company said that making Tamiflu would require a series of complex drug development steps that would require two to three years to master. Cipla, however, said that the drug was not that hard to copy.
Normally Roche's patent would protect it against a generic drug manufacturer, including ones based in India, which has been more careful to respect patents as it takes a bigger role in the global biopharma business. But all countries, including the US, allow generic copies in the event of a medical emergency, and governments have been clamoring for a much larger supply of Tamiflu.
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