Drug company ordered to cut price of life-saving medication after 3,000% jump – CBC

$300K per year for kidney disease drug ‘excessive,’ says federal agency

Sep 29, 2022

A pharmaceutical company that increased the price of a live-saving medication is charging too much and must lower it, says Canada’s drug price agency.

In a rare decision this week, the Patented Medicines Prices Review Board (PMPRB) said the price of Horizon Pharma’s Procysbi “was and is excessive.”

Procysbi contains the same active ingredient, cysteamine bitartrate, as Cystagon, which was brought to market by another company. The new drug has a special coating that delays absorption so it is released more slowly into the body, meaning it doesn’t need to be taken as often.

Both treat nephropathic cystinosis, a rare genetic disease in children that can destroy the kidneys. Cystagon was only available through a special access program. Procysbi was approved by Health Canada in 2017.

But parents of young patients were stunned when the annual price from one to the other jumped some 3,000 per cent in 2018, from about $10,000 to more than $300,000.

Read more: https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/procysbi-kidney-disease-drug-price-1.6601422