Time For Big Pharma To Take Back Orphan Drugs

The controversy over Marathon’s pricing of the steroid deflazacort is fueling calls to revisit the US Orphan Drug Act. For Big Pharma companies, the threat should not be ignored. It is time for the industry’s biggest players to take back development of products like deflazacort to protect pricing for more innovative therapies.

The story about the approval of Marathon Pharmaceuticals LLC’s Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy drug Emflaza (deflazacort) should be a heartwarming tale of another success of the Orphan Drug Act.

When the law was enacted more than three decades ago, the focus was on products exactly like this one: a...

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