Mark Cuban’s pharmacy company says it can lower manufacturing costs for custom rare-disease treatments and one-patient gene therapies.
Cost Plus Drugs, the low-cost pharmacy venture backed by entrepreneur Mark Cuban, has said it can reduce the manufacturing costs of treatments for rare diseases and so-called n-of-1 gene therapies — experimental treatments designed for a single patient’s unique genetic profile.
The claim, posted by the company on social media, points to a potential shift in how some of the most expensive medicines in the world are produced. Gene therapies and rare-disease drugs can cost hundreds of thousands — sometimes millions — of pounds per patient, putting them out of reach for many health systems globally.
Cost Plus Drugs built its profile by sourcing generic medicines at sharply reduced prices and selling them direct to patients in the United States, cutting out the intermediary layers that typically inflate drug costs. Applying that model to bespoke, small-batch therapies would be a considerably harder task — but the company says it believes the manufacturing costs can come down.
No specific figures, timelines, or details of how the savings would be achieved were included in the post.
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This story originates from a US company and covers the American healthcare market. The NHS has its own separate processes for approving and funding gene therapies and rare-disease treatments in England, overseen by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and NHS England.
Source: @statnews