Chao Center Donates Medications to Combat Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- The Chao Center for Industrial Pharmacy & Contract Manufacturing officials announced that they will donate about 1,800 bottles of a medication to help fight multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) to Cambodia and Ethiopia.

The Chao Center, which is based in the Purdue Research Park, produces and manufactures drugs in smaller quantities that can't be produced in a cost-effective way by larger pharmaceutical companies. Eli Lilly and Company partnered with the center in 2007 to continue to produce and distribute the multidrug-resistant medication Seromycin[R]. The partnership is part of a $135 million effort by Lilly to combat tuberculosis and multidrug-resistant tuberculosis around the world.

The medication, which has a market value of about $360,000, will be provided to the Global Health Committee, which will then distribute it to patients in need overseas.

"There is a great need for medications around the world. Right now there are about 6,000 people a year with multidrug-resistant TB in Ethiopia and many more worldwide who have no access to drugs," said Dr. Anne Goldfeld, associate professor of medicine for the Harvard Medical School and co-founder of the Global Health Committee. "Through a donation from Eli Lilly and Company in 2008, we received MDR-TB medications that we are distributing in Ethiopia in partnership with the Ethiopian Ministry of Health."

Highly contagious, difficult to treat and a growing threat to global public health, MDR-TB strikes about 450,000 people each year, with the highest rates of prevalence in China, India, South Africa and the countries of the former Soviet Union.

The donated medications were produced by Lilly and transferred to the Chao Center in 2007 when the center became the sole North American provider of Seromycin[R]. The Chao Center is now manufacturing Seromycin[R]. The center was created through a gift by Purdue University School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences alumni Allen Chao, Ph.D., and his wife, Lee Hwa-Chao.

"It is part of our mission and part of our partnership with Lilly to be involved in humanitarian efforts such as the Global Health Committee, and we know that the medications will be used to help people who are the most vulnerable and in great need of health-care assistance," said Joseph B. Hornett, senior vice president, treasurer and COO of the Purdue Research Foundation.