Posted by Michael Wonder on 23 Nov 2018
Novartis's pricing might be tested with costly eye therapy
23 November 2018 - Novartis’s price-setting muscle is about to be tested after it won European Union approval for a blindness-fighting gene therapy whose $850,000 list cost in the United States has been labeled too expensive by some groups.
Luxturna, sold by Spark Therapeutics in the United States and by Novartis elsewhere after the Swiss drugmaker bought the rights, is a one-time treatment for a rare genetic disease that causes blindness in about 1 in 200,000 people.
“EU approval of the one-time gene therapy Luxturna marks a milestone in reimagining medicine and can bring real value to patients, their families and society as a whole,” said Paul Hudson, who heads up Novartis’s drugs division.
