I’ve written many pieces about the counterfeit drug trade – we all know that it’s a big problem. It now seems that Roche’s cancer and rheumatoid arthritis treatment, rituximab, is coming in for more than its fair share of illegal competition – two apparently unconnected cases in five months!
Rituximab is the best-selling cancer drug in the world and had sales last year of around £4.7 billion. Maybe it’s unsurprising that it has attracted the attention of the fake drug trade.
Counterfeit vials of MabThera, imported from a wholesaler in Romania, were recently discovered in Germany (the drug is branded Rituxan in the US, Japan & Canada). Fortunately, Roche believes no patients were harmed by the fakes but it admits that once the product hit the wholesaler network, the company lost control and has no knowledge of what happened.
The other recent case involved tampering of products with Italian packaging. In this case, the products were found in Germany, the UK and Finland. Here the drugs came with falsified records and were found to contain none, diluted or tampered with active ingredient.
Adequate checks of paperwork are essential to help identify cases like these, and the process is one of the key elements of Good Distribution Practice. Any unusual step in the chain or unfamiliar supplier should be viewed with caution and if there is any doubt, products should be tested and the authorities informed.
In these cases at least, the products were not thought to have been harmful in themselves but we shouldn’t forget that the victims of the trade are not just the developers but the patients who potentially miss out on effective treatments. And with the exceptionally high cost of many cancer treatments, this is a trade that isn’t going to disappear.
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