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UNITED
Laboratories Inc. (Unilab), considered one of the
biggest pharmaceutical firms in the country, is keen on
helping biotech companies extracting natural ingredients
as a source of compounds for medicines market their
product.
Jose
Maria Echave, Unilab’s vice president for business
development, said the company is encouraging scientists
to bring their natural pharmaceutical products for
possible development and collaboration in marketing
them.
Echave
made the pronouncement at the fourth Philippine
Biotechnology Venture Summit held at the Ateneo School
of Medicine and Public Health.
“If you
have a very good natural product, we are willing to
listen,” said Echave.
He noted
that the trend now in pharmaceuticals is to go
biologicals, adding that the Philippines has the edge
since the country has a strong natural-ingredients
industry.
“In the
pharmaceuticals sector the way to go now is biologicals.
The era of blockbuster synthetic drugs is about to end,”
said Echave.
Unilab
is also encouraging scientists to use biotechnology to
develop vaccines. Currently, a Filipino company, Servac
Philippines Corp., is developing an anti-rabies serum
from the antibodies produced by horses. Servac hopes to
make the vaccine commercially available by the end of
the year.
Another
area in which biotechnology can venture into is the
development of dengue diagnostic kits. “Anything
portable, anything you can bring down to the lowest unit
to the community will be very, very useful. It has to be
at a good price point, we are looking at P5 [as possible
price]. If you can come up with drugs that is at P5,
then we can do business,” said Echave partly in
Filipino.
He,
however, cautioned scientists that the efficacy of
natural ingredients must be backed up by clinical
evidence.
“There
are ways by which we can develop our resources but there
has to be a good clinical evidence. Hindi puwedeng
endorsement lang [Endorsement is not
sufficient],” he said.
Data
from the National Integrated Research Program on
Medicinal Plants showed the Philippines has over 1,500
identified medicinal plants. Many of these plants have
been endorsed by the Department of Health. They include
bayabas, bawang, ampalaya, sambong, yerba buena,
lagundi, akapulko, pansit-pansitan, tsaang-gubat and
niyog-niyogan.
Pascual
Laboratories Inc., the second biggest Filipino
pharmaceutical company, has succeeded in marketing
phytomedicines (herbal medicines) with anticough
medicine from lagundi popularly known as Ascof and a
medicine from sambong to help prevent kidney stones,
Re-Leaf. |
