Makers shamed after school kids replicate overpriced HIV drug in lab

Daraprim is produced by Turing Pharmaceuticals, which drew national attention past year when chief executive Martin Shkreli opted to increase the price of the anti-parasitic from $13.50/tablet to $750/tablet in the US.

“We should congratulate these students for their interest in chemistry, and all be excited about what is to come in this STEM-focused 21 century”, said Shkreli.

Who can make Daraprim for less. pharmaceutical executive Martin Shkreli (center) or a bunch of schoolboys?

Soon after Fairfax Media published the story this week, people on Twitter started peppering Mr Shkreli with questions about the story.

A handful of Australian teens synthesise an expensive anti-malarial drug for about $2 a dose.

Shkreli hiked the cost of Daraprim from $13.50 to $750 a year ago as then-CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, which earned him almost universal condemnation and a congressional subpoena.

Shkreli defended the price hike, saying that the drug was highly specialized and cited the need to fund further research into toxoplasmosis, but eventually chose to halve the initial price hike for hospitals, bringing it down to US$375 per 25mg pill.

I made a short statement on the Australian students: https://t.co/cSQo3jHZoF You can also watch recording chemistry lessons on my channel!

Led by chemist Alice Williamson and motivated by a dose of disgust, a class of Sydney Grammar School students turned 17 grams of 2,4-chlorophenyl acetonitrile into 3.7 grams of pyrimethamine, the active ingredient in Daraprim.

Another student Milan Leonard told Australia’s ABC News that he and his classmates worked on the project to highlight the “ridiculous” price of the drug, which costs A$13 for a bottle of 50 tablets in Australia.

“He was clearly trying to justify something driven by the profit motive”, Wood told the newspaper.

In a video he posted to YouTube, Shkreli hurriedly reads a prepared script about his own accomplishments and the work being done at Turing. After a lot of controversy, including Shkreli’s arrest last December on allegations of securities fraud, after which he stepped down as the head of Turing, the firm agreed to lower the price of the dug to make it more affordable.

She teamed up with the high school students and their science teachers. After picking up the rights, Shkreli immediately raised the price from $US13.50 a pill to $US750. He also invoked Ahmed “Clock Kid” Mohamed.

Now, as Forbes so artfully stated it, high schoolers from Sydney Grammar in Australia have “punched Martin Shkreli in the face, figuratively”. You need training and facilities and equipment.