[alister]

> Interviewer at Endpoints: You plan to potentially launch a generic GLP-1 in Canada and Brazil in 2026.

Looking at the original interview on Endpoints, Sandoz CEO Richard Saynor says this about Brazil:

In Brazil, the biggest prescribers are dentists. Everyone says, “Why dentists?” They do aesthetic work, and then you have your Botox, and then you want a bikini body. It’s behaving like an OTC consumer brand. Imagine selling this, rather than $300, at $50. Anybody over the age of 40 in Brazil will probably want to be on that.

But he doesn't explain how they got around the patents. Another comment on HN says they expire in July 2026, but can anyone explain why the patents expire so soon in Brazil?

[abirch]

1. In the USA people use compounding companies to get around patents.

2. https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

[giarc]

I think that loophole has closed. If I recall correctly, compounding pharmacies were only allowed to do that as the US gov put the drug on a special list due to shortages. I believe they have removed it from this list (or will do shortly) and that pipeline will stop.

[vitorgrs]

In Brazil, medicines lose patent protection 20 years after the original filing date. The filing date was in 2006, so the patent expires in 2026.

But note that the patent was only granted in 2019, it took 13 years. They went to court last year, but the justice (as far as I know) has continued to follow the precedent that the original filing date applies.

So they went to the federal government to try to change the law, but the government has refused so far.

The INPI (Brazilian Patent Office) used to take a VERY long time to register/grant patents. It's faster now (about 4 years on average), but it's still slow.

But I'm seeing here that in the US it was 2017. So not that different from 2019 anyway.

PS: Brazil also have several local labs focused on generics, and besides this, there's also state-owned lab, Fiocruz, who makes vaccines and medicines as well, several of them, to distribute though SUS.

In Brazil by the constitution, everyone has the right of health, so if the public health care (SUS) don't distribute, you can sue the governament and get the medicine. So there's a big incentive for the governament to make patents expire as soon as possible to have generics and include on SUS.

e.g Fiocruz manufacture PrEP, and started now PrEP injection (Cabotegravir).