??? relenza stock available/ others, page-2

Kincella, I understand that Relenza takes several months to manufacture but because it is the original drug that Gilead modified (to make water soluble for use in pill form as Tamiflu), it should be quicker to scale up production. At present GSK can only make about 1 million courses pa but could quickly increase this to probably 10 million as they have the old manufacturing plants such as in Melbourne capable of starting production. Within 2 years or so they were promising to be able to produce over 40 million courses pa and will need a lot more than that. In fact in 2-3 years I expect production of Relenza will be exceeding 100 million courses pa.

I suspect there will be no significant announcements for some time as sales are already based on the clearance of a 2 year stockpile. They only have stocks coming in with new production. By the end of this year though several million more courses will be supplied to those on the lengthening waiting list. Remember that is $3/course to BTA so they may well receive $3-5 million in additional royalties by start of 06.