A therapeutic product has marked the history of psychopharmaceutical research, both through its effectiveness and its improbable journey. Clozapine was in fact synthesized at the end of the 1950s by a Bernese laboratory, now better known for its energy drinks than for its pharmacopoeia.
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Wander, since it is the producer of Ovomaltine and Isostar, has however never been able to benefit from this product with antipsychotic virtues still considered exceptional today, bought in 1967 by the then flamboyant Rhineland chemical-pharmaceutical conglomerate Sandoz. It was the latter who launched the marketing of the substance in 1972 under the Leponex brand.
“No one knows what makes clozapine so unique. I have personally worked on ten other treatments and none of them supported the slightest comparison with this one,” explains Ravi Anand, medical manager of the transalpine specialist in neurological diseases Newron, in an interview with AWP.
Alas, while the Basel group was preparing to conquer the West with its miracle treatment, Finnish researchers brought to light a hematological adverse effect that was certainly rare, but highly fatal. Less than 1% of patients developed acute agranulocytosis, half of whom died from this blood abnormality manifested by the disappearance of a certain type of white blood cells.
The important American market suddenly became inaccessible for clozapine and Sandoz was forced to combine its continued distribution to other outlets with draconian hepatological monitoring measures.
The rate of adoption of the most effective medication in psychiatry to date was reduced to a very low level, confined moreover only to patients refractory to other available therapeutic options.
Under pressure from patients and their entourage, clozapine was the subject of new studies in the United States at the end of the 1980s, which ultimately led to its approval by the American Medicines Agency (FDA) in September 1989.
Since specializing in replacement drugs, Sandoz still distributes clozapine for neuroleptic purposes against schizophrenia, in a generic form and accompanied by the drastic conditions of administration established half a century ago.
