Photo from Business Wire
A pair of US legislators are questioning why ARIAD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has increased the price of its leukemia drug Iclusig (ponatinib) by more than $80,000 over the last several years.
ARIAD raised the price of Iclusig 4 times in 2016. The drug now costs nearly $199,000 a year.
Senator Bernie Sanders (Vermont) and Congressman Elijah Cummings (Maryland) sent a letter to ARIAD last week requesting information about these price increases.
Cummings and Sanders are also investigating whether ARIAD took additional steps to boost profits by discontinuing sales of certain dosages and quantities of Iclusig in order to charge patients and insurers more in exchange for less medicine.
“These outrageous sales tactics indicate that ARIAD is more concerned with its profit than with its patients,” Sanders and Cummings wrote in the letter.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Iclusig in December 2012 to treat chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and Philadelphia chromosome-positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).
In late 2013, the FDA suspended sales and clinical trials of the drug due to reports of serious adverse events.
The FDA allowed ARIAD to resume selling Iclusig in December 2013, but only to CML/ALL patients who cannot tolerate, or whose disease is resistant to, other tyrosine kinase inhibitors.
“Despite this new evidence showing the drug posed a far greater safety risk to patients than was known when the drug came on the market, ARIAD nonetheless raised the price of Iclusig several times over the subsequent 4 years,” Sanders and Cummings wrote.
“In the interest of patients and taxpayers, we are interested in learning more about the impact that the escalating price and restrictions on product availability have had.”
ARIAD has released a statement acknowledging Cummings’ and Sanders’ letter and defending its decisions to increase the price of Iclusig.
The company said it “makes significant investments in research and development (R&D) to advance breakthrough treatments” for patients with rare cancers.
In fact, ARIAD has invested more than $1.3 billion in R&D and accumulated losses of approximately $1.4 billion, which have not been recovered. In 2015, ARIAD generated $119 million in total revenue and invested $171 million in R&D.
The company said it intends to respond to Cummings’ and Sanders’ request for information.
