The gene ther­a­py pric­ing de­bate gets re­al as Spark sets $850,000 charge for its pi­o­neer­ing drug

Years of de­bate, spec­u­la­tion and analy­sis have boiled down to this: Spark $ONCE Ther­a­peu­tics has set an $850,000 whole­sale ac­qui­si­tion cost for the US’s first gene ther­a­py — $425,000 per eye dam­aged by an RPE65 gene mu­ta­tion.

Set to roll out in a mat­ter of weeks, the WAC price for Lux­tur­na falls to­ward the high­er end of an­a­lysts’ bets, which ranged from about $600,000 to just un­der the $1 mil­lion mark for what’s in­tend­ed as a one-time treat­ment for the rare, sight-steal­ing ge­net­ic con­di­tion. Now the high­est priced ther­a­py in the coun­try — out­pac­ing drugs like Spin­raza at $750,000 for the first year of ther­a­py — it falls on Spark to come up with the right pric­ing mod­el that can per­suade pay­ers to cov­er the pro­ce­dure for a small group of un­der 2,000 po­ten­tial pa­tients, with few­er than 20 new pa­tients per year.

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