Biogen to Reduce Price of Alzheimer’s Disease Treatment by 50%
For a patient of average weight, the annual cost at the maintenance dose of the Alzheimer’s disease treatment will be $28,200.
Source: Getty Images
By - Biogen recently announced that it will reduce the wholesale acquisition cost (WAC) of its Alzheimer’s disease treatment, Aduhelm, in the US by nearly 50 percent.
For a patient of average weight, the annual cost at the maintenance dose will be $28,200.
“Over the past several months, we have listened to the feedback of our stakeholders, and we are now taking important actions to improve patient access to ADUHELM,” Michel Vounatsos, CEO of Biogen, said in the announcement.
“Too many patients are not being offered the choice of ADUHELM due to financial considerations and are thus progressing beyond the point of benefitting from the first treatment to address an underlying pathology of Alzheimer’s disease. We recognize that this challenge must be addressed in a way that is perceived to be sustainable for the US healthcare system,” Vounatsos continued.
At the beginning of June, FDA officially approved Aduhelm, marking the first Alzheimer’s drug approval in nearly 20 years and the first to address cognitive decline in patients with the illness.
But the drug came with an annual cost of $56,000 per patient, a non-retail expenditure that mainly affected Medicare Part B.
With a price of $56,000 per patient, an Altarum report found that Aduhelm was expected to increase prescription drug spending and the national health expenditure more than $73 billion by 2028.
The reduced price of the drug takes into consideration the questions raised about this first class of therapies, the potentially eligible population, and revised pharmacoeconomic assumptions.
The company assumes that with insurance coverage, access to diagnostics, and specialized centers, about 50,000 patients may initiate treatment with Aduhelm in 2022.
The reduced WAC price furthers Biogen’s ongoing commitment to inform treatment choice.
Recently, the company presented new p-tau181 biomarker data at the clinical trials on Alzheimer’s Disease conference (CTAD) and announced its plan to complete the Phase 4 confirmatory post-marketing study of Aduhelm in an accelerated timeline of four years.
Additionally, Biogen will implement a series of cost-reduction measures in 2022 to better align its cost with its revenue base, which will be impacted by generics in multiple sclerosis and the delayed uptake of Aduhelm.
