Some Weight Gain Solutions
Most people would give anything for a harmless weight gain pill that would make them gain weight. But there are some people suffering from involuntary weight loss due to AIDS, burns, cancer, renal failure, gastrointestinal disorders, or chronic lung disease who would do anything for a pill to help them gain weight.
Biotechnology General Pharmaceuticals Inc. (BTG), a US-based firm with a large research and manufacturing facility in Rehovot's Kiryat Weizmann industrial park, has purchased a US company, Gynex, that produces such a pill. BTG president, chief executive officer and treasurer Sim Fass was the one to realize the potential in an age of AIDS of such a drug and to make a successful bid for Gynex.
Fass, born in pre-state Israel and brought to the US by his parents at the age of 10, says the deal is a turning point for the company, which has lost money for 14 of its 15 years due to the heavy investment that biotechnology research requires. We are now among the exclusive club of seven biotech firms in the US out of 400 listed on the stock exchange that are making a profit. Thanks to this drug, Oxandrin, we may be able to recoup in one year the $ 39 million in stock transfers that it cost to buy Gynex, Fass says during one of his frequent trips to Israel.
For years, doctors regarded severe weight loss in patients as just a tangential problem, Fass explains. But a variety of studies have shown that if a patient loses 34 percent of his baseline body weight, he will die no matter what treatment he gets for the actual disease. This has been based even on data that people smuggled out about starving Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Oxandrin is the commercial name of the synthetic testosterone that promotes muscle gain in patients with severe weight loss; the generic name is oxandrolone. Manufactured for BTG by Searle in Chicago, it is being distributed by Quantum Health Resources in Indianapolis. Oxandrin is the only oral anabolic agent approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for reversing clinical weight loss. In healthy individuals, a delicate balance is maintained between the synthesis of protein and the building of muscle mass (anabolism), on the one hand, and the degradation of protein and depletion of muscle mass (catabolism) on the other. When the catabolic rate exceeds the anabolic rate, weight loss occurs. A continuing catabolic state is known as cachexia, in which the patient's weight goes steadily downhill. This is frequently seen in AIDS patients. Other drugs for patients with severe weight loss are appetite stimulants, but these lead mostly to the storage of fat and/or water instead of protein. Oxandrin, taken orally and costing about $4 per pill (or $6,000 to $9,000 a year per patient), has been shown in clinical trials to prevent or treat cachexia so that AIDS patients can remain ambulatory instead of being confined to hospital beds. This, Fass says, constitutes a major boon to health insurers, who save a lot on hospitalization.
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