A US and EU perspective By Daniele Severi Bruni & Sophie Schmitz What’s the idea? Payer concerns over increasing cost of therapies and uncertainty of clinical data has led to a growing interest in market access tools. Experts Daniele Severi Bruni partner at MKO and Sophie Schmitz from Partners4Access discuss this potential payer solution for…
Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapies, which use a patient’s own immune cells to fight cancer, are one of the most exciting breakthroughs in cancer treatment for decades. Research into this technology has been ongoing since the early 1990s, but only in the last few years have these treatments been successfully used to treat cancer…
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner Scott Gottlieb has announced that the drug agency is developing a system by which innovative gene therapies could be sped through the regulatory process. In a speech to board members of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine, Dr. Gottlieb spoke about the challenges associated with reviewing cell and gene…
For the rapidly developing orphan drug market, change is a constant. From new technologies to discussions over pricing, the estimated $137 billion market will witness new challenges for biopharma companies in the rare disease space. In a bid to unravel these barriers and with 11 months more to go in 2018, the team at Partners4Access…
Roche’s new haemophilia treatment, Hemlibra, is has a high estimated price tag of $482,000 for the first year of treatment and $448,000 for every subsequent year. Despite this, an analysis by the U.S. Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) has revealed that the treatment is still cost effective. The report stated that the Hemlibra…
French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi have agreed to acquire Bioverativ, a U.S. hemophilia specialist for $11.6 billion. This deal is the biggest for Sanofi in seven years, with the aim of achieving a stronger position in the rare disease space. After initially falling due to investor speculation that Bioverativ was overvalued, shares in Sanofi have since…
The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) announced that there would be no sudden changes to the UK regulatory framework in the event of a no-deal following Brexit negotiations. It went on to confirm that it would provide “adequate notice to industry and ensure that companies had sufficient time to implement any changed…
The biotech venture capital firm Atlas Ventures has announced the creation of Generation Bio, a company that has developed a system by which the dosage of a gene therapy can be varied to maximise the potential benefit. The company has started on the back of a $25 million Series A funding round from Atlas. The…
Spark Therapeutics has announced its recently approved Luxturna (voretigene neparvovec-rzyl), a gene therapy treatment for biallelic RPE65 mutation-associated retinal dystrophy will cost $425 000 per eye, or $850 000 in total, in the U.S. This is below the $1 million price tag that was originally speculated. Spark Therapeutics is also working with Harvard Pilgrim, a…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of Spark Therapeutics’ gene therapy Luxturna (voretigene neparvovec-rzyl) for the treatment of a rare inherited form of vision loss and blindness. This marks the first approval by the FDA of a directly administered gene therapy for the treatment of a disease caused by mutations…