Today, the Ministry of Health is holding an annual tender for the supply of insulin under government orders. The result is known in advance. The tasty morsel of the market worth $120 million will again be divided between traditional suppliers - Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. The Russian manufacturer, which has been trying to get to the trough for years, is again overboard. The company "Bryntsalov A" has less and less hope of recouping the huge investments in the creation of insulin production.

According to the Ministry of Health, in addition to ZAO Bryntsalov A, OOO Biotek, GUP Central Pharmaceutical Warehouse No. 6, and OOO Intermedpharm submitted applications to participate in the competition. "These companies are Russian suppliers of Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly drugs," explains Nikolai Demidov, an analyst at the Pharmexpert Research Center. "These Western companies do not trade with us directly." According to Pharmexpert, in 2000, the Danish Novo Nordisk and the American Eli Lilly occupied 58% and 29% of the insulin market, respectively. They have no competitors among Russian companies. RAO Biopreparat, which develops genetically engineered drugs, did not have time to complete clinical trials. And the Bryntsalov A company again failed to find a common language with the Ministry of Health.

"We submitted documents for participation in the tender to the Ministry of Health's office, but they were not even accepted for consideration," says Viktor Kolomin, director of Bryntsalov A, indignantly. "Right now, we do not produce only two types of insulin - mixed and rapid-acting. The demand for them is only 1.5%. But the competitive drugs are divided into two lots, and each includes one of these items. The Ministry of Health specifically set such conditions in order to prevent us from entering the competition. Although, according to the law, it is forbidden to purchase imported drugs for more than 250,000 rubles if their high-quality analogues are produced in Russia."

Naturally, the Ministry of Health denies any manipulation in the compilation of lots. "The determining factor was the interests of patients with diabetes, not the commercial interests of individual manufacturers," says Natalia Podgorbunskikh, head of the department for the organization of pharmaceutical activities at the Ministry of Health. "Bryntsalov A" was not admitted to the tender last year either. The company lost its sales market: since diabetic drugs are almost never circulated on the free market, it could only negotiate with regions that did not have enough imported insulin. As a result, "Bryntsalov" accounts for no more than 3-5% of the market. The costs of building the plant - about $70 million over five years - do not pay off. "If the Ministry of Health and the Western lobby did not interfere with us, we could cover the entire need of the country for nine types of insulin," says Kolomin. Prices for imported insulin are constantly rising. In 1993, when Russia made its last centralized purchases, it cost $2-4. Now the selling price for the same drugs is $7.5-8. Kolomin claims that his company could return prices to their previous level even with 30% capacity utilization. But there's no use shaking hands after a fight. "According to the information we have, ZAO Bryntsalov A is not the manufacturer of the products that are the subject of the competition," says Natalia Podgorbunskikh.

THE MOST SCANDALOUS DRUG.

Several companies were involved in the production of animal-based insulin in the USSR, but none of them produced a sufficiently pure preparation. Therefore, in 1990, the Ministry of Health suspended production of finished forms. Russian raw materials were sent to the West. There, three market giants took on processing them: Novo Nordisk (Denmark), Eli Lilly (USA), and Hoechst (Germany). These companies had once proposed to the Ministry of Health to organize production in Russia. The plants were supposed to cost $180 million (Hoechst's proposal), $240 million (Novo Nordisk), or $280 million (Eli Lilly). Not a single project was implemented.

Numerous attempts to resurrect domestic insulin failed one after another. The Kurgan and Penza plants lost their suppliers of raw materials. The case of the Maikop "Russian insulin" is still being handled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs - $10 million and 40 billion rubles allocated for the reconstruction of the enterprise disappeared without a trace. RAO "Biopreparat" still cannot find an investor to build the plant.

The apotheosis of insulin passions was the scandal between Novo Nordisk and ZAO Bryntsalov A. Vladimir Bryntsalov publicly stated that he stole the technology from the Danes and was going to make his own genetically engineered insulin. Novo Nordisk warned that the raw materials supplied to Bryntsalov had already run out and now it was unclear what "Br-insulin" was. Experts argued about this for a long time, but in the end "Bryntsalov A" still received a license for production. Now that the company has changed its supplier to the French Diosin, everything is starting all over again.

Bryntsalov is out of the game