ICER goes af­ter No­var­tis for over­pric­ing MS drug; Val­ne­va, Glax­o­SmithK­line breaks vac­cine pact

→ ICER is com­ing out against the price of No­var­tis’ Mayzent (sipon­i­mod), ar­gu­ing the mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis treat­ment has a low long-term val­ue for mon­ey. While the price watch­dog ac­knowl­edges there’s some ev­i­dence that the drug — a block­buster-to-be priced at $88,000 a year — can im­prove out­comes for pa­tients with ac­tive sec­ondary pro­gres­sive MS, it’s dis­sat­is­fied with its lack of ben­e­fit for the whole pop­u­la­tion test­ed in a Phase III (No­tably, the FDA ap­proval cov­ers a slight­ly dif­fer­ent group, name­ly re­lapsed/re­frac­to­ry MS). Their ad­vice to pay­ers: “Giv­en its sim­i­lar­i­ties to fin­golimod, sipon­i­mod should be con­sid­ered amongst a group of high­ly ef­fec­tive dis­ease mod­i­fy­ing ther­a­pies (DMTs) for re­laps­ing forms of MS, in­clud­ing fin­golimod, alem­tuzum­ab, na­tal­izum­ab, and ocre­lizum­ab.”

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