For now, patients may have difficulty getting their hands on the pills, says Jailson de Andrade, secretary for research-and-development policy at Brazil's science and technology ministry. The law also demands that the compound be made at a facility that is approved for making human drugs. But no such facility is currently manufacturing phosphoethanolamine in Brazil, de Andrade says.
Even so, Hoff says that patients regularly arrive at his hospital saying that they have taken the drug, even though he is still waiting for a pharmaceutical company to produce just enough of the compound to treat the ten patients he wants to enrol in an initial clinical trial. “I don’t know where they are getting it, but the reality is they are,” he says.
For years, patients got the compound from a chemistry lab at the University of São Paulo’s campus in São Carlos. When the university attempted to halt distribution, thousands of patients sued. In the past, some judges have orderd the university to give patients phosphoethanolamine made in the chemistry laboratory, but it is not authorized to produce medicines.
In response to the debacle, the science and technology ministry committed about 10 million reais (US$2.9 million) to study the compound. Early results from the study show that it is not toxic to cells grown in culture — but it is equally harmless to cancer cells. Animal studies are ongoing, says de Andrade.
For now, patients may have difficulty getting their hands on the pills, says Jailson de Andrade, secretary for research-and-development policy at Brazil's science and technology ministry. The law also demands that the compound be made at a facility that is approved for making human drugs. But no such facility is currently manufacturing phosphoethanolamine in Brazil, de Andrade says.Even so, Hoff says that patients regularly arrive at his hospital saying that they have taken the drug, even though he is still waiting for a pharmaceutical company to produce just enough of the compound to treat the ten patients he wants to enrol in an initial clinical trial. “I don’t know where they are getting it, but the reality is they are,” he says.For years, patients got the compound from a chemistry lab at the University of São Paulo’s campus in São Carlos. When the university attempted to halt distribution, thousands of patients sued. In the past, some judges have orderd the university to give patients phosphoethanolamine made in the chemistry laboratory, but it is not authorized to produce medicines.In response to the debacle, the science and technology ministry committed about 10 million reais (US$2.9 million) to study the compound. Early results from the study show that it is not toxic to cells grown in culture — but it is equally harmless to cancer cells. Animal studies are ongoing, says de Andrade.
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