12 January 2018 - Global drug makers are looking to a tiny biotech’s $850,000 therapy for a rare type of blindness as a model for getting paid for highly expensive – and effective – new medicines.

Spark Therapeutics plans to launch its recently approved Luxturna treatment for an inherited genetic mutation that causes blindness in March. The drug is to be administered only once, by injection, and Spark plans to charge $425,000 per eye, an unprecedented price.

But what is grabbing the attention of other drug makers is not just what might be called an eye-popping price to treat a condition that Spark estimates affects 1,000 to 2,000 people in the United States, but the ways Spark is looking to help payers ranging from the federal government to private insurers absorb the drug’s high cost, including spreading out payments over several years.

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