FiercePharma, by Arlene Weintraub,
When Dave Lennon, president of Novartis unit AveXis, said in November that the company’s experimental gene therapy to treat spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) could be cost-effective at a price of $4 million to $5 million, some pricing critics immediately raised red flags.
But then the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) did its own analysis of the therapy, Zolgensma, using $2 million as a hypothetical cost, and “we felt quite validated,” Lennon said during a FierceBiotech panel discussion last week. The treatment would be more cost-effective than Biogen’s Spinraza at that price, ICER suggested.
“We still think there are some elements missing in terms of societal impacts and some of the longer-term impacts of these kinds of therapies, especially in young children,” Lennon said of the ICER review during the panel at the Phacilitate Leaders World conference in Miami.
Zolgensma is still awaiting FDA approval, and Novartis hasn’t yet hit upon a price, but $2 million would dwarf the costs of other advanced treatments, like Spark’s eye gene therapy Luxturna, priced at $850,000. Thus ICER’s draft report “bodes very well for cell-based therapies and gene-therapy based assessments,” Lennon asserted.
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