Venus Remedies has entered in the region of Australasia with getting a patent from New Zealand for its antibiotic Potentox, a fixed dose combination of cefepime and amikacin. This unique combination of a cephalosporin with aminoglycoside is a super specialty product indicated for the treatment of hospital acquired pneumonia, community acquired pneumonia and febrile neutropenia. NewZealand is the fourth country after South Korea, India and South Africa from where Venus Remedies has got patent for Potentox.

This patent will give the company exclusive marketing rights in New Zealand. Post registration in New Zealand market, the company expect to generate handsome revenues from this product which will add to growth in top line and bottom line of the company.

Potentox has already become revenue generator and is contributing more than Rs 120 million per annum to the total revenues of the company and is expected to grow at the rate of 30 per cent to 40 per cent Y-o-Y basis due to global registrations and Patent grants in pipe line from other markets.

There is a fair amount of bacterial-resistance towards the conventional antibiotics like penicillin, ampicillin-clavulanate, erythromycin, cefuroxime (Ceftin), ofloxacin (Floxin), and trimethoprim-sulfanethoxazole. This has led to increase in treatment cost for pneumonia. The major generators of costs for community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) in New Zealand adults are the number of hospitalisations (particularly for the group aged 65 years and over) and loss of productivity. The annual cost estimates were to be $63 million.

According to a WHO estimates, on an average, 30 per cent of adults in developed nations who have a pneumococcal pneumonia die from the infection.

Venus Medicine Research Centre has developed Potentox taking into consideration these aspects. As a result, there is negligible bacterial resistance to Potentox, thumping its success rate to more than 95 per cent and reduction in hospitalization time to 7-10 days from conventional 14-21 days and bringing down the treatment cost substantially.

The company is on the verge of grant of patent of Potoentox from other countries and is actively pursuing talks for exclusive market licensing of Potentox in all those countries where patent of the product has been granted.