ICN drug aids those with mystery illness

Paul Clinton

Shares of ICN Pharmaceuticals Inc. shot up more than 17% Tuesday,

after the World Health Organization said the company’s Ribavirin

antiviral drug has been effective in treating a mystery illness that

has killed 63 people worldwide.

The health organization said the drug, used with or without

steroids, has been effective in stabilizing patients afflicted with

severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. The recommendation

appeared on the organization’s Web site.

In heavy trading on the New York Stock Exchange, ICN shares

rocketed 17.85% to close at $10.50.

The Costa Mesa company has been providing the drug in an

intravenous form to doctors and other healthcare providers who are

now treating SARS, a company spokesman said.

“The World Health Organization was looking for some sort of

treatment and they’ve just started recommending it,” ICN spokesman

Chris Kuechenmeister said. “We’re supplying the drug.”

Even though the drug has stabilized some patients, Ribavirin

hasn’t proved to be 100% effective.

“But in the absence of clinical indicators, its effectiveness has

not been proven,” the organization said on its Web site.

That didn’t stop investors from gobbling up shares on Tuesday. ICN

rose $1.59, as 5.8-million shares changed hands, up from it’s average

of about 500,000 shares exchanged daily.

Ribavirin is an existing drug that ICN sells via a marketing pact

with Schering-Plough Corp. primarily in an inhalant form. The Food

and Drug Administration, in 1994, approved the drug for treatment of

hepatitis as part of a drug cocktail. The form now being used for

SARS has not been approved by the FDA and is experimental.

Kuechenmeister said he knows of no plans to put the drug on an

approval track with the federal drug regulator.

Ribavirin has been a hit for ICN; the company pulled in between $3

million and $5 million in revenue during 2002 from sales of the drug.

There has been 1,804 cases of the deadly SARS virus and it has

killed more than 60 people worldwide, with a large number in and

around Hong Kong. There has been a reported 10 cases in the U.S. and

nine in Canada. On Tuesday, U.S. officials quarantined a plane from

Tokyo that landed in San Jose. Five people arriving from Hong Kong,

where the virus has been found, developed SARS-like symptoms.