Fac­ing a pay­er back­lash over stick­er shock, Bio­gen fields pos­i­tive da­ta on Spin­raza for chil­dren 2-12

Fight­ing an up­hill bat­tle to get pay­ers to cov­er its $750,000 first-year price tag on Spin­raza (nusin­ersen), Bio­gen is post­ing an­oth­er round of stel­lar da­ta to back its use among old­er chil­dren with rare cas­es of spinal mus­cu­lar at­ro­phy.

Re­searchers test­ed the drug in 126 SMA pa­tients who were be­tween the ages of 2 and 12 and gen­er­al­ly suf­fered from Type 2 or Type 3 forms of the neu­ro­mus­cu­lar dis­ease. As we’ve al­ready seen with in­fants un­der 6 months suf­fer­ing ear­ly-on­set dis­ease, there was a clear re­sponse, with a 3.9 point im­prove­ment at month 15 in the Ham­mer­smith Func­tion­al Mo­tor Scale Ex­pand­ed (HFMSE) score, com­pared to a 1.0 point drop in pa­tients in the place­bo arm.

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