Last year, the pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli gained a notorious reputation for increasing the price of Daraprim, an anti-malaria and HIV medication, from $13.50 to $750 overnight.
A group of Australian high school students may have found a solution for people in need of these medications.
A group of Year 11 students at Sydney Grammar School have been able to recreate Pyrimethamine, the key ingredient of Daraprim, in their school lab. To create 3.7 grams of the compound for AU$20 (about $15 or £12).
One of the students, Milan Leonard, told Australia’s ABC news that he and his classmates wanted to show how “ridiculous” the price of the drug had become. In Australia, a bottle of Daraprim costs just AU$13 for a bottle containing 50 tablets of the drug.
Daraprim has become a global topic of discussion when Turing Pharmaceuticals, at the time led by CEO Shkreli, acquired the rights to the drug, then immediately increased the price by 5,000 percent. Shkreli has since become infamous for offering to bail out 4chan, the notorious internet image board, and purchasing the lone copy of a Wu-Tang album and refusing to release the tracks unless Donald Trump was elected president.
The work of the Sydney Grammar students was made possible with the help of the Open Source Malaria, a project dedicated to finding a cure for malaria supported by the University of Sydney as well as the Australian government.
One of the students working on the project, Brandon Lee, described the feeling of recreating the compound to ABC.
“At first there was definitely disbelief,” Lee told ABC. “We spent so long and there were so many obstacles… it surprised us.”
“So it was definitely disbelief but then it turned into happiness as we realized we finally got to our main goal.”
When asked how it felt to undermine Big Pharma, student Milan Leonard said he was “ecstatic, it was bliss, it was euphoric.”
Martin Shkreli responded to news of the students’ accomplishments with a short YouTube video and a string of tweets.
“I’m delighted to hear about more and more students entering the STEM field,” he said in his video. “These Australian students are the proof that the 21st-century economy will solve problems of human suffering through science and technology.”
His tweets showed less enthusiasm.
http://twitter.com/MartinShkreli/status/804114694722244608
http://twitter.com/MartinShkreli/status/804448690110726144
