NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Roche, the Swiss drug maker, isn't producing enough Tamiflu to meet the demand for bird flu anti-virals, but a small, Philadelphia-based biotech believes it has found a way to stretch existing supplies.

Hemispherx Biopharma (down $0.15 to $2.69, Research) chief executive officer William Carter said that his company's drug Ampligen can be mixed with Tamiflu to triple the strength of the anti-viral. But rather than provide a triple-strength dose to a single patient, Carter said that existing stockpiles of Tamiflu could be tripled in size by creating a Tamiflu-Ampligen combo giving three times as many patients access to the anti-viral without losing potency.

Ampligen was not designed as a vaccine, but is undergoing late-stage testing as a treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome. Carter said that Ampligen is currently administered to 75,000 "very ill" patients annually and he expects to submit the drug to the Food and Drug Administration by the end of 2005.

The government does not require FDA approval for drugs or vaccines that could prevent or control a pandemic from bird flu or any other virus, disease or bioterrorist attack. So Hemispherx does not have to wait for FDA approval if the U.S. government decides to grant the company a bird flu contract.

President Bush announced on Tuesday that he would ask Congress for $7.1 billion in emergency funding to prepare for a possible bird flu pandemic, including $1.2 billion to buy enough vaccine for 20 million people and $1 billion to stockpile anti-virals like Tamiflu, the pill from Roche (up $0.10 to $170.42, Research), and Relenza, an inhalable from GlaxoSmithKline (up $0.48 to $52.00, Research). Both of these drugs are FDA approved.

Vaccines are used to prevent viruses prior to infection and anti-virals are used to treat patients after infection. The U.S. government has awarded two contracts to build a supply of bird flu vaccines, with a $62.5 million contract for Chiron and a $97 million contract for Sanofi-Aventis. Vaccine makers are also being encouraged to develop faster methods of production. There are no-FDA approved vaccines for bird flu and existing vaccines are considered experimental.

Roche said it has received Tamiflu orders from about 40 countries and the company reluctantly agreed to outsource production when demand outstripped supply. GlaxoSmithKline said it has faced a similar situation with Relenza. Chief executive officer Jean-Pierre Garnier said that in a recent sit-down with an unnamed national health official, the official offered "within two minutes" to buy the entire scheduled line of Relenza production for 2005.

Carter of Hemispherx is not the only person with a plan to stretch the Tamiflu supply. Joe Howton, a medical director at Adventist Medical Center in Portland, Ore., told Reuters that probenecid, a treatment for gout sometimes used to boost antibiotics, could also be used to stretch Tamiflu supply.

Bernstein analyst Gbola Amusa said the long-term safety for these Tamiflu-combinations is unknown, and that could dampen sales ahead of a pandemic.

"The big question is: Are these drugs safe?" said Amusa. "What are the effects on patients over a long time? I don't think they've been studied in conjunction with Tamiflu. For now, I don't think people are going to see them as salvation."

Bird flu, also known as H5N1, can be transmitted from birds to humans and has killed more than 60 people in Asia, with a mortality rate of about 50 percent. H5N1 cannot be transmitted from human to human but, like any other influenza virus, it mutates constantly. Scientists recently discovered that the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed more than 50 million people originated in birds, igniting fears that it could happen again.

To read about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's stake in Tamiflu, click here.