Medical science makes ground-breaking discoveries every day, with the newest of them being a promising drug that claims to alter the effects of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), an inherited neuromuscular disease that causes progressive loss of muscle function. Approved by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday, the gene therapy drug by Novartis is the first of its kind and probably the most expensive in the whole of the world.
Christened as Zolgensma, the life-saving drug is priced at $2.125 million, or an annualized cost of $425,000 per year for five years by the company. It was apparently acquired by Novartis for $8.7 billion last year and is expected to make blockbuster sales in the time to come. Commenting on the novel drug, CEO Vas Narasimhan stated, “Zolgensma is markedly better than any other therapy out there, particularly in the clinical trials of type 1 that we’ve released,” He further added, “Clearly, parents will know right away that this is a medicine that performs extremely, extremely well in these infants and has this kind of marked effect on their well-being.”
The gene therapy is likely to treat children under 2 years of age with spinal muscular atrophy and is being referred to as ‘“another milestone in the transformational power of gene and cell therapies to treat a wide range of diseases.” Renowned financial group- Jefferies is also forecasting Zolgensma sales to reach $2.6 billion, above the $1.9 billion consensus peak sales estimate, which will make it a ground-breaking offering both in the medical as well as business spectra’s.
Source: Luxury Launches
