Novartis hopes to develop cheap dengue test
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Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG hopes to develop a cheap test to detect dengue fever following the acquisition of vaccine and blood-testing firm Chiron, an executive said.
Thousands of people across Southeast Asia this year have been hit by dengue, a potentially fatal mosquito-borne disease for which there is no vaccine. The disease, which occurs mainly in tropical Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, affects tens of millions of people every year.
Novartis, which owned 42 percent of Chiron Corp., agreed last month to buy the remainder of the California-based firm.
“Chiron does specialty blood testing in many countries, so we hope to talk to them about developing a potential dengue diagnostic,” Paul Herrling, head of corporate research for Novartis, told Reuters in an interview on a visit to Singapore.
Novartis is developing an anti-viral treatment that targets the replication of the dengue virus. The work is being done at the Novartis Institute for Tropical Diseases which was set up in Singapore a year ago to conduct research on “neglected” diseases, including tuberculosis.
Chiron, which is also testing a vaccine against the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, has three main business areas—vaccines production, blood tests, and drugs for infectious diseases and cancer.
The acquisition of the rest of Chiron for $5.1 billion is expected to close in the first half of next year.
Novartis, the world’s sixth-biggest drug maker by prescription sales, has three divisions—pharmaceuticals, consumer health, and its generics business Sandoz—and will create a fourth from Chiron’s vaccines and diagnostics division.
Herrling said countries in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean needed a cheap, easy kit to detect dengue, often called “break-bone” fever because it causes pain in the muscles and joints.
Singapore alone reported more than 10,000 cases of dengue fever this year. The tropical city-state which provides medical facilities for the region had to postpone some non-essential operations as its hospitals were swamped with dengue cases.
“Dengue is not so easy to detect. There are so many different things that can give you a fever, so diagnostics are very important,” said Herrling.
A new biochip developed by Singapore’s Attogenix Biosystems can detect the dengue virus after two to three days of the onset of a fever, compared with current tests that need seven days.
But the machine needed to read the chip, which the company hopes to make commercially available next year, would still cost hospitals about S$50,000 ($29,430), according to the company, although that is half the cost of conventional testing equipment.
“We need something cheap and fast,” Herrling said.
Developed countries have been criticised for their failure over the years to better control many of the diseases, which afflict poorer countries.
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates in October pledged $258.3 million for research and development to combat malaria, including new cash to test the world’s first vaccine against the disease, and said it was a “disgrace” that the world had allowed malaria deaths to double in the last 20 years.
“We selected a really neglected disease that affected many people,” Novartis’ Herrling said, adding that the most recent outbreaks in rich countries such as Singapore were now drawing attention to the disease. But a cure for dengue could still be at least 10 years away, he said.
Herrling said the institute in Singapore hopes that medicines developed to treat one disease could also serve as a weapon against another. Dengue fever, for instance, is part of a family of viruses that includes Japanese encephalitis and yellow fever, he said.
“When we find drugs that affect dengue, we test it on all the others. It makes the investment more efficient,” he said.
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