Am­gen, No­var­tis ready to roll as FDA green lights block­buster cam­paign for mi­graine drug — priced at $6,900

Am­gen and No­var­tis have brought home the big Aimovig (erenum­ab) ap­proval they’ve been hunt­ing, scor­ing first-mover ad­van­tage for a block­buster con­tender that will now look to start chang­ing the stan­dard of care for de­bil­i­tat­ing mi­graines.

Sig­nif­i­cant­ly, the heavy­weight part­ners — who will share the US mar­ket­ing rights — are launch­ing this CGRP pi­o­neer with a list price of $6,900 a year. That num­ber comes in well be­low the $8,000 to $10,000 spread that Ex­press Scripts had al­ready warned would be un­ac­cept­able to them. It’s al­so well un­der the $8,500 fig­ure the In­sti­tute for Clin­i­cal and Eco­nom­ic Re­view pen­cilled in for their re­view, which they con­sid­ered too cost­ly for all but the most se­ri­ous­ly af­flict­ed.

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