Merck & Co., Inc. will launch Welireg (belzutifan) next month in its first US Food and Drug Administration-approved indication for certain von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease-associated solid tumors, at a price that reflects the product’s initial use in rare cancers. However, the company is also developing the hypoxia-inducible factor-2 alpha (HIF-2α) inhibitor – acquired in its $1.1bn purchase of Peloton Therapeutics, Inc. in 2019 – for broader cancer patient populations.
The wholesale acquisition cost (WAC) for Welireg is $26,400 per month, or $316,800 per year before rebates and discounts, which is nearly twice as much as the WAC price for Merck’s top-selling product, the PD-1 inhibitor Keytruda (pembrolizumab), approved for several different types of solid tumors and in larger patient populations, including tumor types that overlap with Welireg, such as renal cell