Putting a Price on Life: Is the Answer Outside Pharma?

 To cure the previously incurable we must take two giant steps: the first towards better understanding the science behind a cure, and the second towards ensuring accessibility for those people in need of the treatment.   Although there is still much to discover, we got the science right some time ago. The first gene replacement therapy – Gendicine (Shenzhen SiBiono GeneTech) – was approved in China in 2003 and has been successfully administered to more than 30,000 patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma. A single dose of this medication costs $400.  Another example of early innovation is Neovasculgen (Russian Human Stem Cells Institute), a non-viral gene therapy developed and approved in Russia in 2012 for the treatment of atherosclerotic peripheral arterial disease. It costs less than $50 and its efficacy has been proven in a post-marketing surveillance study.   Similar but more recently developed therapeutics bear a much higher cost. For example, Novartis ’ Zolgensma (onasemnogene abeparvovec), released in the US for the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy, costs $2.1 million per patient. Despite Gendicine and Zolgensma both being AAV-based therapeutics, Zolgensma is 5,000 times higher than Gendicine.  Pricing curative treatments – sky high vs. rock bottomDan Ollendorf, Director of Value Measurement and Global Health Initiatives at the Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health (CEVR), says the contrasting cost of these drugs is unde...
Source: EyeForPharma - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news