TB Drug Price Hike Cancelled

The chief of the Purdue Research Foundation says Rodelis on Saturday returned the rights to the obscure drug, which treats drug-resistant tuberculosis but is only used by around 40 Americans every year, the Times reports.

“We discovered literally on Thursday the strategy that had been undertaken” by Rodelis, said Dan Hasler, the president of the Purdue Research Foundation, which has oversight of the manufacturing operation. Hasler said the foundation spent Monday reversing the price hike charged by Rodelis on roughly 30 orders of the 30-capsule blister packs. It would also mandate that drugmakers devote a certain amount of revenue to R&D-or they would lose certain government grants and tax credits-as well as prevent insurers from selling health plans that charge patients more than $250 a month in co-pays for drugs, according to The Wall Street Journal.

“Without fast access to this drug, used to treat a very serious parasitic infection, patients may experience organ failure, blindness or death”, Sanders said in a written statement issued with Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. In 2014, spending on medicine increased by 13 percent, totaling $374 billion.

Four years later, in 2007, the company gave the rights of the drug for the U.S. and Canada to the Chao Center for Industrial Pharmacy and Contract Manufacturing. This week, there has been widespread outrage over a similar move from another drug company.

Wendy S. Armstrong, MD, FIDSA, FACP, medical director of the Ponce de Leon Center in Atlanta and vice chair of HIV Medicine Association, told IDN that the price hike will have significant effects to toxoplasmosis patients, especially those who are at high risk for complications. The HIV Medicine Association joined the Infectious Diseases Society of America in writing an open letter to Turing this week about what they describe as unjustifiable pricing for a “medically vulnerable population”. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen.