The outcry renewed the prolonged debate over soaring drug prices in the USA, which unlike other nations, particularly in Europe, has no regulations to keep costs low.
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Pyrimethamine is used to fight toxoplasmosis, an parasite-borne infection that often inflicts persons with weakened immune systems, such as patients with HIV/AIDS.
Leucovorin helps to reverse the negative effects pyrimethamine use on bone marrow. Compounded drugs are typically made to fill a doctor’s prescription for an individual patient, sometimes because the mass-produced version is in short supply or completely unavailable and sometimes to allow for customized formulations or dosages. Despite widespread protest over the massive price hike of a 62-year-old off-patent drug, Shkreli failed to bring down the price after promising he would do so.
Baum explains, “It is indisputable that generic drug prices have soared recently”.
Turing, a privately held biopharmaceutical company, acquired the exclusive rights to market Daraprim in the United States in August from Impax Laboratories. Last month, the CEO of Turing raised fury for increasing the price of Daraprim overnight.
In a press release directly referencing Turing Pharmaceuticals’ Daraprim price hike, rivals Imprimis announced it would be selling a new pyrimethamine-based alternative retailing at less than $1 per pill.
Mark Baum, Imprimis’ chief executive, said the company would be targeting drug companies that make treatments unaffordable. Daraprim, or branded pyremethamine, was bought from its producer by Turing Pharmaceuticals owned by a hedge fund manager Martin Shkreli, who then hiked the price to $750 becoming “the poster child for big pharmaceutical greed”. The medication has faced a competition this week as the biomedical company Imprimis Pharmaceuticals of San Diego has introduced a competitor to the medication with $1 per capsule.
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Shares in Imprimis surged 17.4 percent, closing at $7.01 on the Nasdaq.
