Russian attempt to manufacture musk deer-based anti-impotence drug proves expensive flop

A Russian attempt to create a domestic anti-impotence drug has been criticised for its inefficient use of state funds by the parliamentary body responsible for financial oversight of the federal budget, Russian business daily Kommersant reported on Thursday.

According to the Russian Accounts Chamber, spending on the development of the medication, provisionally named Muskuliv, amounted to approximately €11 million between 2017 and 2025, while overall costs for the project exceeded €26.4 million, 1.6 times higher than the initial estimate, according to Kommersant.

Based on chemicals extracted from Siberian musk deer, the drug required the construction of a nursery to breed the animal in the city of Gorno-Altaysk, in the republic of Altai in southern Siberia, as well as a laboratory in the Moscow region to mass produce the medication.

Both facilities were due to open in 2020, but the nursery only started working four years behind schedule, while the laboratory was never built, according to Kommersant.

Those failures led to the medication being developed using raw materials purchased at market rates, rather than those obtained from the purpose-built nursery, while clinical trials were conducted in private centres, rather than those belonging to Russia’s Federal Medical Biological Agency (FMBA), Kommersant continued.

In its highly critical report, which was submitted to Vladimir Putin and the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Accounts Chamber advised that those managing the project be prosecuted, and any usable intellectual property transferred to the FMBA, Kommersant concluded.