Through the Facebook group mentioned in the article, FIP Warriors. Someone in the group lived near me and brought me some vials to start and then after that the admins helped us get more.
That's fantastic! Is it really as expensive as the article claims? I think the article stated $5,000 to $7,000.
It really heavily depends on how much your cat weighs, what type of FIP they have, and which brand you buy - there are a few different manufacturers of the drug and some are a lot more expensive (the pill form costs way more). But yes it is expensive, I think we spent about $3500 on the meds in total. He weighed 3 lbs to start off so that made it less expensive (although by the end of treatment he was 10 lbs!)
I am of course 1000% biased but K-State research ROCKS IT.
I'm so glad you were able to save Juan! This is really, really amazing. I just can't figure out why a pharmaceutical company won't manufacture this drug!
It’s my understanding that around when the UC Davis research was completed, Gilead (who owns the patent for GS and remdesivir) saw remdesivir as a potential Ebola treatment (this was during the Ebola outbreak a few years ago) and was conducting clinical trials for it. Remdesivir and GS-441524 are very closely related, remdesivir is a prodrug of it and breaks down to GS in the body. Gilead was concerned that licensing the patent to GS-441524 someone else might interfere with their ability to sell remdesivir as a human drug, and they are not interested in making a veterinary drug. It’s extremely frustrating!
So they're sacrificing feline lives for the money. Because that's always the bottom line with the pharmaceutical empire.
Yes unfortunately there’s not a lot of money to be made in veterinary drugs, so the cats lose out. Before covid-19 the fear was that remdesivir would just languish forever in patent-limbo because it was not a good treatment for Ebola so they abandoned it, but now the fear is that if remdesivir is approved and can be prescribed off label to cats it will be even more unaffordable than the black market versions because it will be priced with the assumption that people’s insurance will cover most of the cost.
And you've taught me, too, so no apologies necessary!
Yes, ironically it's China where you can get it for a relatively low cost. I found a site selling it and it mentioning that they get it from a supplier in China, but they also mentioned they make a living selling it so obviously they make a profit.
