Ascletis announces expansion of Ritonavir oral tablet production capacity to 530 million tablets per year

Ascletis Pharma Inc recently announced that it has further expanded its Ritonavir oral tablet production capacity to approximately 530 million tablets per year, to meet the potential escalation in the domestic and global demands. The company has taken multiple measures for expansion of the annual Ritonavir production capacity, including adding additional key equipment at the manufacturing facilities of Ascletis Pharma, a company statement notified.

Ritonavir oral tablet is a pharmacokinetic booster of multiple oral antiviral drugs targetting viral proteases and a component of the approved oral antiviral drug Paxlovid (Nirmatrelvir 300 mg tablet + Ritonavir 100 mg tablet co-administration package), said the statement.

It further said that Ascletis aims to be a global commercial supplier of Ritonavir oral tablets. To date, Ascletis owns the only authorised Ritonavir oral tablet in China, which has passed bioequivalence study. Ascletis’ Ritonavir oral tablet was approved in September 2021 by China National Medical Products Administration. Moreover, Ascletis has submitted marketing authorisation applications for Ritonavir (100 mg film-coated tablet) in 12 European countries (Germany, France, Ireland, the UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark) through its agent in Europe.

Dr Jinzi J Wu, Founder, Chairman and CEO, Ascletis, said in the statement, “With rapid global spread of the Omicron variant, there are more urgent needs for COVID-19 oral drugs. In addition to further expansion of annual ritonavir oral tablet production capacity, we are accelerating the development of ASC10 (targetting RdRp) and ASC11 (targetting 3CLpro), two novel oral drug candidates against COVID-19.”