Sunday, September 2, 2018

Good News, For Merck, On Moderately Priced New HIV-1 Med Approvals Last Week


Not cheap by any means, but generally less expensive than the older alternatives (multiple drug cocktails and combos).

Kenilworth has indicated a price of $46 a day for Pifeltro®; Delstrigo® at $70 a day. [After rebates, in the goofy US non-system of delivery, those final numbers could actually be cut in half.] And true enough, the newly approved pair may yet cannibalize some of Merck's earlier HIV med franchises (primarily Isentress®) but it's always better to "eat your own lunch" than to let others do so. Here's the bit -- I am highly overdue in getting this out:

. . . .[Last] Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two new HIV-1 medicines, Delstrigo and Pifeltro.

The company said Delstrigo is a once-daily fixed-dose combination tablet of doravirine, lamivudine and tenofovir disoproxil fumarate, and Pifeltro is a new non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor which is to be administered in combination with other antiretroviral medicines.

“As part of Merck’s 30-year commitment to the care of people with HIV, we are pleased to now bring forward these two new antiretroviral treatment options, Delstrigo and Pifeltro, which we believe offer a compelling clinical profile for clinicians and people living with HIV,” said Dr. George Hanna, vice president and therapeutic area head of infectious diseases, Global Clinical Development, Merck Research Laboratories. . . .


So, onward, yet again. . . this is the hardest part of the year for me, in truth. But onward.

नमस्ते

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