28 January 2019 - Healthcare professionals and patient groups have written to Vertex’s CEO Jeffrey Leiden in a bid to resolve a funding row over cystic fibrosis drugs, as UK MPs prepare to hold a public hearing investigating their price.

Vertex has a range of drugs that help to correct the defective protein that causes the debilitating symptoms of cystic fibrosis, including severe respiratory problems that are life-limiting.

Around 90% of cystic patients are now covered, and the company is working on treatments for the remaining 10%.

But they are expensive, and in 2016 the UK’s NICE said that one of Vertex’s most recent cystic fibrosis drugs Orkambi (lumacaftor with ivacaftor) is not cost effective in patients with a specific kind of mutation.

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