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.
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