Cuba drug exports seen doubling to $300 mln in '05

HAVANA, June 29 (Reuters) - Cuban pharmaceutical revenues will at least double to $300 million this year due to increased demand and new products such as a flu vaccine, a senior industry official told Reuters on Wednesday.

"This year revenues will be around $300 million, compared with $100 million to $150 million in 2004," Dr. Manuel Raices Perez-Castaneda, business development manager at Havana's flagship facility, the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, said.

The forecast, if proven correct, would make the pharmaceuticals sector the island's fifth-largest foreign exchange earner.

Cuba's state-run biotechnology sector encompasses around 50 research and development centers organized under the Council of State and led by President Fidel Castro.

The industry is considered one of the most advanced in the developing world.

The government reported pharmaceutical exports averaged $50 million annually during the 2000-2003 period, the last time official figures were available.

Raices said the $300 million included direct exports to growing markets in Venezuela, China, Malaysia, Russia, India and Pakistan, among other countries, plus revenues from joint venture sales outside the country and technology transfers.

The government has reported technology transfers to over a dozen countries and has joint pharmaceutical ventures in various stages of development in Egypt, Iran, India, China and elsewhere.

Cuba's four largest foreign exchange earners are tourism, remittances, the export of professional services and nickel. They collectively are expected to account for around $4 billion of Cuba's $6 billion in foreign exchange revenues this year, local economists said.

Dr. Pedro Lopez, director of clinical trials and regulations at the center, said hepatitis-b and meningitis-bvaccines, interferon, the world's first synthetic flu vaccine, other vaccines and products were consolidating niches in the developing world.

Lopez said there were virtually no sales to developed Western countries, but that could change in the coming years if a line of drugs that control cancer come on line.

The experimental drugs target epidermal growth factor, a protein associated with the growth and spread of tumors in a range of cancers, including lung, breast and colon cancer.

In a novel approach, the drugs are intended to block the spread of cancers by activating a patient's immune system to make antibodies that resist the growth protein.

The drugs are currently undergoing advanced clinical trials in various countries including Canada, Spain, India, Germany, China and the United States where, in a first of its kind exception to the U.S. trade embargo, California biotechnology company CancerVax Corp. was granted permission to test and eventually market the cancer drugs.

Raices said another experimental drug that cured diabetic foot ulcers, sparing patients amputation, could also be marketed in developed Western nations.

"We have managed to save the feet of more than 50 percent of people already scheduled for amputation," he said of a Cuban clinical trial of the drug. 06/29/05