Not surprisingly drug pricing and value were hot topics as industry leaders gathered in San Francisco for the biggest business meeting of the year for the drug industry Jan. 8. This year, the pricing debate has a tilt toward innovative effective drugs with exorbitant price tags like gene therapies, as industry insiders acknowledged a disconnect between sponsors and an American public increasingly angry by financial roadblocks to treatment.
Spark Therapeutics Inc. captured a lot of headlines just ahead of the J.P. Morgan Healthcare meeting when it announced the price for its gene therapy Luxturna (voretigene neparvovec-rzyl), approved by the US FDA for a rare inherited form of blindness, would be priced at $425,000 per eye for a total one-time cost of $850,000 for most patients