Intas Pharma Introduces Affordable MDS And AML Drug In India

India’s Intas Pharma has announced that it is introducing an affordable Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS) and Acute Myelogenous Leukemia (AML) drug. The drug, Azadine, is priced at one fifth of the innovator brand, Azacitidine. Azadine is currently being manufactured at Intas Pharma’s SEZ facility, which is located in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Intas Pharma priced the drug with the hopes of making it affordable for the majority of patients who required treatment. MDS is a bone marrow cancer in which abnormal cells become plentiful in the bone marrow or in the blood. In the long term, MDS can lead to AML, a blood cancer.

In order to treat MDS and AML, Indian officials are currently importing Azacitidine. The treatment can be expensive, which makes it more difficult for those suffering from MDS or AML to attain effective treatment.  According to The Business Standard, between 4 and 5 people per 100,000 living in India suffer from either MDS or AML. Intas Pharma released a statement on the matter. “Data extrapolated to the Indian population from global epidemiologic studies suggest that the disease burden of MDS in India is likely to be sizeable. Also, cytogenetic studies suggest that MDS patients in India get affected by the disease at a younger age and also tend to have a higher risk,” said the company.

Azacitidine has been shown to prolong overall survival duration, prolong time to transformation into AML, increase response rate, reduce transfusion burden, and  improve quality of life. It is the only drug that been shown to do so. Intas has operations in more than 70 countries around the world, and in India, the company has one of the pharmaceutical leaders in the area of chronic therapy.