Posted by Michael Wonder on 09 Apr 2018
Sarepta hit with call to drop Duchenne drug costs
6 April 2018 - The biopharmaceutical company, which won controversial FDA approval for a Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy drug, now confronts patient groups asking HHS to take its patents and drop the price of that drug.
Sarepta Therapeutics is under fire from patient groups that backed the Food and Drug Administration approval of its Duchenne muscular dystrophy drug eteplirsen.
The groups on Thursday, April 5, sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services asking the agency to drop the price of eteplirsen because the company failed to disclose federal funding contributed to the creation of the drug in paperwork for five patents. The drug is expensive, ranging in cost from $300,000 to $1.5 million a year, according to the letter, and Sarepta's failure to mention the federal funding in the patent documents is a violation of federal law.
