New Hep C Treatment 1000 USD a day.

[mecch]

Merry Christmas from Gilead!

Receiving the FDA nod two weeks before Sovaldi, Janssen Therapeutics’ NS3/4A protease inhibitor Olysio (simeprevir) costs 21 percent less: $66,360 for 12 weeks of treatment, compared with $84,000 for Sovaldi’s 12-week regimen.

http://www.poz.com/articles/sovaldi_olysio_401_24943.shtml

Well I guess only insurance companies will shell out that much:

Gilead, for one, will provide financial assistance for Sovaldi to those who have no insurance and who have a maximum household income of $100,000 for a family of three and 500 percent of federal poverty level for larger households. There is assistance to bring co-pays down to no more than $5 in most cases, and financial aid for as much as $16,000 is available to go toward prescription deductibles and coinsurance obligations. Gilead is also partnering with an independent non-profit, the Patient Access Network (PAN) Foundation, which assists both federally- and privately-insured people who need assistance with out-of-pocket medication expenses. For more information on financial aid for Sovaldi, click here, and for Olysio, click here.

[GoForIt]

 From the article:

"Sovaldi promises to cut standard treatment time from the previous range of 24 to 48 weeks down to 12 to 24 weeks, in addition to lessening side effects and raising cure rates from about 70 percent to the 80 to 90 percent range in many cases."

Treatment time in half, less side effects and raises the cure rate....

Wish we could cure HIV.

[mecch]

Yeah its a brilliant step forward for treatment.

And yeah, wish we could cure HIV. But I'm pretty sure that will happen one of these years...

[MitchMiller]

Gilead paid a huge amount ($11B) to acquire Pharmasett, the  Atlanta based company that produced this product.  They also produced one of the early HIV drugs.  Anyway, total costs to Gilead were probably about $12B, given they had to pay for phase III trials.

Omitting all overhead, they can recoup the $12B on less than 15K patients.  Not bad.  No wonder Gilead stock has really gone up recently.

[mecch]

I got 142,000 patients?   But still, nice return on investment!

[Ann]

Omitting all overhead, they can recoup the $12B on less than 15K patients.  Not bad.  No wonder Gilead stock has really gone up recently.

Not to mention that there are far more people living with hep C (both in the States and worldwide) than there are with hiv. Now that the treatment for hcv is becoming more successful and less daunting (due to a shorter duration of treatment, along with fewer side effects), a lot more people will be coming forward for treatment. Gilead is sitting on a goldmine!