Sh­iono­gi, Roche get their first ap­proval for the next big thing in fight­ing the flu

Sh­iono­gi has won an ap­proval to sell Xofluza (balox­avir mar­box­il) in Japan un­der an ac­cel­er­at­ed re­view path­way. And Roche plans to fol­low up that suc­cess by rolling it out as quick­ly as pos­si­ble in the rest of the world.

Up to now, Tam­i­flu has been the chief an­tivi­ral on the mar­ket. But balox­avir could eas­i­ly sur­pass it. The an­tivi­ral works by block­ing an en­zyme that the flu virus needs to repli­cate in a cell, and its one pill could re­place the 10 re­quired for Tam­i­flu over 10 days, of­fer­ing any coun­try fight­ing a pan­dem­ic a sim­pler, faster so­lu­tion.

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