In the next few months, many hopeful eyes will be directed to the commercial area between Gundelfingen and Zähringen in the north of Freiburg. Production of Paxlovid started there a few months ago. This is the anti-infective that could protect risk patients in particular from a severe course of the corona virus. The drug was approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in Brussels last Friday. Doctors, pharmacists and technicians from the Pfizer plant in Freiburg have been waiting for this day for two years. Preparations have been underway since spring 2020.
Pfizer is the second largest employer in the southern Baden university town. The Freiburg plant is considered to be the international group’s most efficient and modern factory for the production of solid medicinal products. Incoming goods inspection, weighing, dosing of the active ingredients are processed fully automatically. In addition, it is the plant that has the task of introducing new drugs to the market in the Group’s global production network. Marketing is prepared in Freiburg and the dosage form is also developed, i.e. the tablet form that is later sold in pharmacies is determined.
“It usually takes two to three years before you can produce a new drug, for example as a tablet, if you have already found a new active ingredient and proven its clinical effectiveness,” says Axel Glatz, head of Pfizer’s Freiburg plant. It must be clarified how and whether the active substance remains chemically stable and where it is best absorbed. No drug has probably been developed as quickly as Paxlovid. “We got commercial production done in six months instead of two to three years.”
Side effects especially in pre-existing conditions
Paxlovid is given in combination with the older drug ritonavir. The former is a so-called protease inhibitor, it prevents the virus from dividing into different sections and entering human cells to multiply rapidly there. The latter is known from HIV therapy and is intended to slow down the degradation of the Paxlovid active ingredient nirmatrelvir in the body. A Covid patient takes two tablets of nirmatrelvir (150 milligrams) and one tablet of ritonavir (100 milligrams) twice a day for five days. Paxlovid will probably not become the only “game changer” in the fight against the pandemic, because not all patients will take it in time. In addition, ritonavir causes side effects, especially in patients with severe previous illnesses.
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