Sydney high-school students recreate life-saving AIDS drug, dirt cheap

The man who sparked outrage last year by hiking the price of a life-saving drug may have met his match in some Australian schoolboys.

US executive Martin Shkreli became a symbol of greed when he raised the price of a tablet of Daraprim from $13.50 (£11) to $750.

Now, Sydney school students have recreated the drug's key ingredient for just $20.

Daraprim is an anti-parasitic drug used by malaria and Aids patients.

Martin Shkreli: 'The most hated man in America'

The Sydney Grammar boys, all 17, synthesised the active ingredient, pyrimethamine, in their school science laboratory.

"It wasn't terribly hard but that's really the point, I think, because we're high school students," one boy, Charles Jameson, told the BBC.

The students produced 3.7 grams of pyrimethamine for $20. In the US, the same quantity would cost up to $110,000.

In most countries, including Australia and Britain, the drug retails for less than $1.50 per pill.

nicko wrote:You don't like him then?

veya_victaous wrote:

nicko wrote:You don't like him then?

Do you like the guy that bought the copyright to Aids and Malaria drug just so he could up the price from $13.50 to $750

veya_victaous wrote:yes that him Martin Shkreli.


the Kids started the project because of him doing that.

nicko wrote:
I said "you don't like him then"   was an attempt at a joke.


I quite often make a joke, but few on the left [and the right] don't seem to get it.      I might give up trying.