http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/23/1424005/-Previous-drug-owner-outraged-Gets-drug-rights-back?detail=email
Public outrage about overnight drug increases convinced Rodelis to return the drug rights to it's previous owner.
Rodelis Therapeutics had acquired the rights to cycloserine last month, and reportedly raised prices 2,600 percent, from $500 for 30 capsules to $10,800.
After sustained criticism from the drug’s original owner, the nonprofit Chao Center for Industrial Pharmacy and Contract Manufacturing, which is affiliated with the Purdue Research Foundation, the patent was returned to the organization Monday, the New York Times reported.
“We said [to Rodelis] this was not what we had intended,” Dan Hasler, the foundation’s president, told the Times. “We discovered literally on Thursday the strategy that had been undertaken,” he added, referring to the price hike.
The foundation will now charge $1,050 for 30 capsules, a doubling in price that is still vastly below Rodelis’ increase. Hasler said the new price was needed to mitigate losses as the drug had cost the Chao Center roughly $10 million since it acquired its rights in 2007.
Cycloserine is only used to treat tuberculosis cases that prove resistant to other drugs. The drug is used to treat about 40 patients a year. It first went on sale in 1955, and was produced by Eli Lilly and Co. until about 2000, when it transferred the manufacturing rights and skills to several foreign generic drug companies, as a philanthropic move.
The news came amid the controversy or a massive 5,000 percent price hike for antiparasitic drug Daraprim, by Turing Pharmaceuticals AG. It received significant more media attention after the New York Times report on Sunday prompted a response from Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who declared:
“Price gouging like this in the specialty drug market is outrageous,” and vow to create a plan to discourage the practice.
capitalism = gov't not regulating and as republicans say "off our backs" and opportunist in our pockets. wow and i thought $750. was out of this universe for one pill at that rate 30 pills would be $22,500.00. how did big pharma get to this point?
