Venus Remedies' German subsidiary, Venus Pharma Gmbh has received marketing authorization from Portugal for its high specialty anti-biotic penem pharmaceutical product Imipenem+Cilistatin. The company intends to launch and market the product in Portugal during the fourth quarter of this calendar year. Earlier it had obtained the marketing authorization for its generic product Meropenem.

Imipenem+Cilistatin was originally developed by Merck, Sharpe and Dhome and is marketed in Europe including Portugal by the brand name of Tienam. The patent for this product has recently expired.

Portugal is fast growing generic market, where generics have already more than 10 per cent of market share. This growth is in line with government policy to increase generics prescription in order to decrease costs with medicines. The product had worldwide sales of US$ 800 million in 2008 and its demand is growing rapidly. Europe alone contributes 30 per cent of the worldwide sales.

This is one of the major achievements of the company as the product is widely used antibiotic in Europe. The product has a very high bacterial susceptibility and a safe and effective drug not only in adults but also in Paediatric patients. Besides this, it is a useful antibiotic for neutropenic cancer patients. This product is an ultra-broad spectrum antibiotic used in the treatment of wide variety of infections for example in the management of Intra-Abdominal infections, Urinary Tract infections, polymicrobial infections and many more.

The company is already marketing this generic product under its brand name Lastinem in countries of Africa, Latin America, Middle East, Asia, South East Asia and CIS. It is expecting marketing authorizations of the product from more than 10 European countries where the company has already filed CTD applications for registrations including UK, France, Itialy, Spain and Germany.