Iran Review

Executive of the research project to produce Iranian MS (Cinnovex) says over 5000 Iranian patients are using the medicine since it was manufactured and supplied to the market two years ago.

Ms. Haleh Hamedi-Far, also managing director of CinnaGen Inc. said Iranian Cinnovex is produced in high quality and half the cost of U.S.-made MS drug. “We have saved millions of dollars in foreign exchange and billions of rials in subsidies,” she said, adding that there is a rapidly increasing demand for the Iranian-made MS drug in the world.

After the U.S., the Islamic Republic is the second producer of MS medicine in the world, she said on the sidelines of the Fifth International Congress on Multiple Sclerosis (MS) held at Imam Khomeini hospital from Nov. 13-14.

Over 80 percent of “world MS patients’ requirements of medicines are now provided by Iran,” Hamedi-Far said. Yet new wave of demands continued, she said, adding that several European, Asian, and African states seek to receive a patent on producing and importing the Iranian-made MS drug cinnovex.

CinnoVex is the trade name of recombinant Interferon beta 1-a, which is manufactured as biosimilar/biogeneric in the country.

Of about 2.5 million MS patients around the world, 30,000 to 40,000 live in Iran. “The number has increased over the past two years,” managing director of CinnaGen Inc. said.

MS is an autoimmune disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks normal tissues of the central nervous system.

The disease is caused by activation of a specific subset of the patient's own white blood cells, pathogenic T-cells, which then attack a fatty tissue called myelin that surrounds and protects nerve fibers and creates multiple areas of scarring (sclerosis) that interferes with the normal transmission of nerve impulses.