Back in the 1980s, the decade of Russia's failed occupation of Afghanistan, the Soviet military developed a novel way of treating blood clots with trombovazima. Now, Russia's Biotechnopark in Koltsovo is producing tablets and injectables of the "Afghan drug" for the market.
Military scientists drew on research at the time into ways of joining polymer fragments with other drug components and eventually came up with imozimaza to treat open wounds and stop bleeding for Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan. That, said Andrei Bekarev, Biotechnopark chairman, became the prototype for today's trombovazima.
Delayed for a couple of decades by the collapse of the Soviet Union, the drug was not developed beyond use as a veterinary drug. Work on a first-grade human form of the drug began only in the past decade as improvements in the Russia economy made further research possible.
Bekarev said the current trombovazima now is a drug for directly affecting the clotting process in humans, has passed all of its clinical tests and is ready for the market as a drug to dissolve blood clots that result in cardiovascular diseases, such as myocardial infarction.
Presumably, it will not be marketed as the "Afghan drug."
- here is the story from Russia Beyond the Headlines