Government’s ambition of making the country a
pharmaceutical hub in the Sub-region could be achieved if strategic investments
are made by government and industry to discover new drugs, a renowned Ghanaian
Industrial Pharmacist, Professor Kwasi Adomako Ohemeng, has said.
“The bulk of the profit in the pharmaceutical industry
is made by companies that discover new drugs and secure patents for them,” he
said.
Prof. Ohemang told B&FT in an interview in Accra
that: “There are several ailments being treated in Ghana with drugs which have
been developed from outside the country and are not necessarily working. Our
purpose for developing the pharmaceutical industry must, therefore, include the
quest to fill in the unmet medical needs of the country.”
He indicated that the pharmaceutical companies in
the country have not invested into any commercial research that will enable
them to discover new drugs to help address the many health challenges peculiar
to the country.
“Currently there is no company in the country
discovering drugs and that is quite disturbing because we need to do things
here and find drugs to meet our peculiar unmet medical needs,” he said.
Speaking about his new discovery, Omadacycline, a
world-class antibiotic which is expected to enter the global pharmaceutical
market next year, Prof. Ohemeng, explained that he led an
optimisation team to successfully develop the Omadacycline, an antibiotic which
is under US Patent number 7,056,902 assigned to Paratek Pharmaceuticals, a
US-based Biotech Company.
Prof. Ohemeng, who is also the Dean of the School
of Pharmacy, Central University College, was recruited from another global
pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS) to help the company fast-track
the process of development.
“It took 17 years between discovery, clinical test and
approvals to get the Omadacycline product finally approved,” he said.
The US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) has granted
approval for the use of Omadacycline for the treatment of adults with
community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP) and Acute skin and skin structure
infections (ABSSSI).
The once-daily Intravenous (IV) and oral antibiotic is
a modern tetracycline that has the activity against broad spectrum of bacteria
including drug-resistant strains of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.
Omadacycline is the first-in-class aminomethylcycline,
which can overcome antibiotic-resistant bacteria in two main ways, by ribosomal
protection and efinx group.
The intravenous (IV) and oral antibiotic is a
product assigned to Paratek. It offers clinicians the opportunity to treat
patients intravenously and the transition to oral administration which can
reduce hospitalization and cost associated with hospital admission.
The FDA decision to approve the drug for the approved
indications was based on multiple clinical trials that assessed the efficacy
and safety of the drug in a total of three phase trials that evaluated the drug
in 2,150 participants. Omadacycline is also being evaluated for the treatment
of urinary tract infections.
Industrial potential
Although 70 per cent of pharmaceutical products used
in the country are imported, the industry is expected to reach US$1 billion in
value by the end of 2018.
Contained in the Ghana Business Development Review
Report, compiled by the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) in June this
year, the report said although local manufacturers had the capacity to fill the
gap, Ghana still depended on the importation of pharmaceutical products.
The report indicated that most of the imports were
from India and China and had left the local manufacturers with only 30 per cent
of the market share in the country.
“The local industry has an installed capacity for both
solid and liquid dosage forms to supply all domestic needs, as well as enough
for export. There is, however, capacity under-utilisation–less than 55 per cent
on average—as a result of inadequate resources,” the report said.
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