Business Concentrates PHARMACEUTICALS
Firm apologizes for poisoning hundreds Top manager of Korean subsidiary is assaulted during press conference The head of the South Korean unit of the British firm Reckitt Benckiser, a supplier of home sanitation and personal care products, was physically assaulted while apologizing for his company’s line of home humidifier disinfectants that caused the
A relative of a victim in the British disinfectant case confronts a Reckitt Benckiser official over a deadly disinfectant chemical. death or serious lung injuries of hundreds of victims in the country. Reckitt Benckiser is known in the U.S. for its Lysol air freshener, Durex condoms, and Easy-Off oven cleaner, among other products. In 1996, its South Korean subsidiary Oxy RB launched a line of humidifier disinfectants that contained a guanidine derivative. The South Korean government ordered the products off the market in 2011 after they
were linked to an epidemic of serious lung injuries throughout the country. By the end of 2015, at least 95 people had died from exposure to the disinfectants, according to a survey by the South Korean Ministry of Environment. Many victims were children or pregnant women. At a press conference in Seoul on May 2, Ata Safdar, Reckitt Benckiser’s head of operations for Korea and Japan, offered the company’s “sincere apologies.” Safdar also expressed his company’s regrets for not taking full responsibility earlier. A chaotic event, his address was attended not only by reporters, but also by injured patients and their relatives. Safdar was shouted at, shoved, and hit in the back of the head. Reckitt Benckiser was not the only company to supply harmful disinfectants in South Korea, but it sold the most popular brand. When the South Korean government ordered the recall in November 2011, it named six products from different companies that contained two specific guanidine derivatives—polyhexamethylene guanidine and oligo[2-(2-ethoxy)ethoxyethyl] guanidinium chloride—as active ingredients. In a 2012 paper (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es300567j), researchers led by Jung-Hwan Kwon of South Korea’s Ajou University noted that the two active ingredients had been approved in South Korea only for industrial use. When the compounds were later incorporated into cleaners for home humidifiers, regulations in the country did not explicitly mandate new tests, they observed.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS TREMBLAY
BY THE NUMBERS
$8.7 billion
Estimated market capitalization of contract manufacturer Samsung BioLogics if it goes through with a proposed initial public offering of stock on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI ). Sources: Samsung BioLogics, Maeil Business News Korea
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | MAY 9, 2016
Gilead charges Merck attorney with lying A federal judge has reopened a patent suit between Gilead Sciences and Merck & Co. after evidence turned up suggesting a Merck patent attorney lied. In late March, a federal jury in California ordered Gilead, maker of the hepatitis C drugs Sovaldi and Harvoni, to pay $200 million for patent infringement. The dispute centered on an active ingredient in both drugs, sofosbuvir, which Gilead acquired from Pharmasset. Merck contended that Pharmasset derived the chemical from a Merck patent. Now that $200 million payment is at risk. Gilead is arguing before a federal judge that a Merck attorney hid the fact that he had been involved in a conference call with Pharmasset employees in 2004 when Merck had tried to license patents that ultimately led to sofosbuvir. Merck failed in the licensing attempt, and Gilead bought Pharmasset and its hepatitis C drugs in 2011 for $11 billion. However, during the call, the Merck attorney, Philippe Durette, who is also a chemist, learned the structure of a Pharmasset experimental drug, Gilead contends. Merck then used the knowledge gained by Durette to file its own patent applications so that they would cover Pharmasset’s drug. Merck won approval for its own hepatitis C drug, Zepatier, earlier this year. Merck said in a court document that Durette didn’t initially remember the call. Nonetheless he acted properly, Merck insists, because he didn’t update Merck’s patents until after Pharmasset published the structure of its experimental drug. But Gilead maintains in a court document that, “simply put, Merck’s asserted patents claim work Merck never did and ideas Merck never had. The asserted claims are invalid, and Merck should collect nothing.” —MARC REISCH
CREDIT: AP
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