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 The daily pill, to be sold under the brand name Harvoni, combines
Gilead's $84,000 pill Sovaldi with another drug, ledipasvir, and
eliminates the need for two older, side-effect-laden treatments that
needed to be taken along with Sovaldi.
Gilead, which has faced a backlash from health insurers over the
high cost of its hepatitis C treatments, said the current regimen of
Sovaldi plus the older drugs, interferon and ribavirin, has a cost
of $94,726.
The company emphasized that the price of the new drug is less than
the current regimen, but insurers and other payers said it is still
unsustainable.
"Unfortunately, we believe that the price being demanded is still
inappropriately high for a product targeting such a large group of
patients," said David Whitrap, spokesman for Express Scripts Holding
Co, the largest manager of pharmacy benefit programs in the United
States. "New innovations do not always require inappropriate,
premium pricing."
Hepatitis C, estimated to infect about 3.2 million Americans, is a
viral disease that causes inflammation of the liver that can lead to
liver failure.
Gilead said nearly half of patients infected with the most common
type of hepatitis C - previously untreated, healthier individuals -
can be cured after eight weeks of taking Harvoni, compared with 12
weeks for the current Sovaldi regimen.
The cost of treating those patients with the new pill for eight
weeks is $63,000.
Wall Street analysts note that the price of Harvoni is lower than
the $130,000 or more now needed to treat certain hepatitis C
patients with Sovaldi and Olysio, a newer antiviral drug sold by
Johnson & Johnson.
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"The price of $94,000 is very attractive," said RBC Capital Markets
analyst Michael Yee. "At eight weeks of therapy, the cost is about
$63,000, which is 30 percent cheaper than Sovaldi."
Deutsche Bank analyst Robyn Karnauskas said Harvoni's pricing came
in slightly below her expectations, but is "rational and strongly
supportive of sustained market share."
Bristol-Myers Squibb Co said on Tuesday it is no longer seeking U.S.
approval for an oral two-drug combination to treat hepatitis C
because of competition from rival drugs.
AbbVie Inc is slated to hear from the FDA later this year on its
application to market an all-oral hepatitis C regimen.
"As the additional hepatitis C drugs are approved over the next few
months, we're looking forward to driving more competition in this
space," Express Scripts said.
Gilead is expected to reap nearly $12 billion in hepatitis C drug
sales worldwide in 2014. Sovaldi sales have been unprecedented for
any first-year drug.
Gilead shares closed 2 percent lower at $103.73 on Friday.
(Additional reporting by Bill Berkrot in New York; editing by Tom
Brown and Matthew Lewis)
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