MYL - Mylan Ramps Up Production of Hydroxychloroquine as a Potential COVID-19 Treatment
Mylan (NASDAQ: MYL) has restarted production of its hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets at its West Virginia manufacturing facility as a potential treatment for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. The company plans to have product available by mid-April and thinks it can ramp up to 50 million tablets, which could treat more than 1.5 million people.
Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, a less toxic metabolite of chloroquine, are antiviral medications that are approved to treat malaria. Because it's less toxic and has anti-inflammatory properties, hydroxychloroquine is also approved to treat a pair of auto-immune disorders, lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis.
An article published in the journal Cell Research in February showed that chloroquine inhibited the 2019-nCoV coronavirus as well as Gilead Sciences' (NASDAQ: GILD) remdesivir in an experiment testing how well the virus infects cells grown in a laboratory. Gilead is running a late-stage clinical trial of remdesivir as a COVID-19 treatment, but since it hasn't been approved for any diseases, remdesivir isn't as widely available as chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine.