REMEMBER Martin Shkreli, the “Big Pharma Bro” described as the most hated man in the world?

The pharmaceutical executive worth an estimated $100 million has just been outsmarted by a group of clever Aussie high schoolers.

For just $US20, the Year 11 students from Sydney Grammar recreated a drug that would sell in the United States for up to hundreds of thousands of dollars — at a fraction of the cost.

The group created 3.7 grams of an active ingredient used in the medicine Daraprim, which is used to treat parasitic infections in people with weak immune systems, such as people with HIV and pregnant women.

The project was part of a collaboration with the University of Sydney.

The students worked in their school laboratory to create the drug, in order to show how “ridiculous” its inflated overseas price is.

In the United States, that quantity would sell for between $US35,000 and $US110,000.

Student Milan Leonard described this price hike as “ridiculous”.

“It makes sense that if you’re putting billions of dollars into research for a drug like this, you should be able to reap some profit, but to do something like this … it’s just not just,” he told the ABC.

He described his group’s moment of success as “euphoric”.

“After all of this time spent working and chemistry being such a high and low, after all the lows, after all the downs, being able to make this drug, it was pure bliss,” he said.

Mr Shkreli shot to infamy in August last year — and was labelled a “morally bankrupt sociopath” and “the most hated man in America” — after his company Turing pharmaceuticals jacked up the price of Daraprim, a drug that costs about $1 to make, to $1050 a pill.

Compounding the apparent greediness — and the global outrage it caused — was Shkreli’s obliviousness, at one point even “giving the finger” to his critics.

For comparison’s sake, in most countries, including Australia, the medicine is sold for $1 or $2 per tablet.

In response to the global backlash, the company lowered the cost by 50 per cent for hospitals.

Daraprim is listed on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential medicines.