30 November 2017 - For fifteen years, John Maraganore has been the chief executive of Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, working to prove that a technology that directly silences genes could be turned into a drug. 

It’s been “a life’s joy,” he says. Now, triumph seems at hand, with a gene-silencing treatment for a clump disease in which clumps of protein destroy the nerves and heart. Now Maraganore recognises that his job is about to change, and is shifting from discussing cool science to the harder topic of drug pricing.

So now, before Alnylam’s new drug, patisiran, is even filed with the Food and Drug Administration, Maraganore is making promises about how the company will behave with regard to drug pricing, in a code of conduct being unveiled today at the Forbes Healthcare Summit. The biggest pledge: Alnylam will grow through inventing new medicines, not through large price increases.

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