The price increase was said to be about 5,000 percent more than its previous value.
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The transaction was reversed quickly enough that patients should feel much less of an impact, Hasler said, noting PRF has a history of providing discounts or vouchers for those who need the drug but can’t afford it.
“Price-gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous”, tweeted Hillary Clinton on Monday, September 21.
A month earlier, a small pharmaceutical company called Rodelis Therapeutics obtained the rights to sell the drugs used to treat tuberculosis, cycloserine.
Cycloserine is a medication that is used to treat multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, a more serious form of TB that has been haunting people who have been battling the disease for a long time.
Earlier this year, Hasler said the Chao Center was approached by Rodelis Therapeutics, which wanted to acquire rights to the drug. “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.
The foundation has now lowered the price to $1,050 for 30 capsules, but about double the price it had charged earlier, in order to mask the $1 million loss it takes each year on the drug.
The inflation of Cycloserine and Daraprim are just some of the examples of pharmaceutical companies’ new business approach, which entails buying the rights of rarely used, old drugs and transforming it into “specialty drugs” to amp up the price.
When PRF got the rights to the drug back, the price didn’t go down to where it was before the deal. “We said this was not what we had intended”.
In a statement on their website, the company said: “Rodelis Therapeutics acquired Cycloserine from The Chao Center on August 19, 2015, with the commitment to continue investing resources to ensure the long-term availability of the product”. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also lambasted Turing’s recent move, pointing to their proposed policy plans that could help address the issue.
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“Rodelis Therapeutics and the Chao Center mutually agreed last week that it is in the best interests of the patients to return the rights of Cycloserine to the Chao Center”, it said. A privately held company, Rodelis develops and commercializes treatments for rare diseases.
