"John C. Martin, the chief executive officer of Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD),
has become a billionaire on the prospects of a powerful new hepatitis C
drug that’s attracting scrutiny from payers and activists over its
$1,000 per pill price tag.
Gilead’s drug, Sovaldi,
was approved in December, and is among the first of a new wave of
hepatitis C treatments that can cure the liver disease faster and more
reliably than previous drugs. Sovaldi, which costs $84,000 for a 12-week
course of treatment, is expected to produce $4.2 billion in revenue
this year, rising to $8.1 billion in 2015, according to the average
estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg."
I mean...... I'm not even sure what to say. Granted that this article is from Bloomberg, which is a financially focused sites, but the very fact that they are APPLAUDING this, is so beyond appalling that I'm physically restraining my self from breaking into my exmilitary linguistical experimental vocabulary. It's bad.
Of course you have to love the transparency that is coming out in the media on these subjects. Just a couple of weeks ago Bayer CEO told reporters that their cancer drugs are only for Western patients that can "afford them".
Gilead CEO Becomes Billionaire on $84,000 Hepatitis Drug
march 3, 2014
John C. Martin, the chief executive officer of Gilead Sciences Inc. (GILD),
has become a billionaire on the prospects of a powerful new hepatitis C
drug that’s attracting scrutiny from payers and activists over its
$1,000 per pill price tag.
Gilead’s drug, Sovaldi,
was approved in December, and is among the first of a new wave of
hepatitis C treatments that can cure the liver disease faster and more
reliably than previous drugs. Sovaldi, which costs $84,000 for a 12-week
course of treatment, is expected to produce $4.2 billion in revenue
this year, rising to $8.1 billion in 2015, according to the average
estimate of 13 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
“This is a huge change in the approach to hepatitis C treatment,” Leonard Berkowitz,
chief of infectious diseases at the Brooklyn Hospital Center, said by
phone. Sovaldi and other drugs like it are producing “spectacular
improvements” in cure rates with minimal toxicity, he said.
Martin,
who joined Gilead in 1990 and became CEO six years later, helped the
company become the world’s largest maker of HIV medicines by developing
drug combinations that are easy to use for patients, including a
medicine called Atripla that combines three HIV-suppressing drugs and a
pill with four anti-HIV drugs called Stribild.
Photographer: Tony Avelar/Bloomberg
John C. Martin, chairman and chief executive officer of Gilead Sciences Inc.
Companies are racing to come
up with oral regimens that eliminate the need for interferon, a standard
injected drug that can cause flu-like side-effects. In February, Gilead
applied for U.S. approval for an interferon-free treatment that
combines Sovaldi and another hepatitis C drug.
“Most people
think the combination pill that Gilead has will be the biggest thing
ever in hepatitis C,” said Berkowitz, who treats many HIV-positive
positive patients who are co-infected with HCV.
Martin, 62, has a
net worth of $1.2 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires
Index. He owns 4.2 million shares of Gilead and 6.4 million vested
options, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission. He’s also sold more than $550 million in Gilead stock since
2002, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Organic Chemistry
The
number of options and shares are in part attributable to Martin’s long
tenure at the company, most of it as CEO, said Cara Miller, a
spokeswoman for Gilead, in an e-mail. The cost of a 12-week regimen of
Sovaldi along with interferon and another drug “is consistent with and
in many cases actually less” than older treatments that require longer
duration of therapy, she said.
Gilead closed down 1.6 percent to $81.45 in New York.
The billionaire, who has a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Chicago
and an MBA from Golden Gate University, has spent most of his career
working on antiviral drugs, and has been an active dealmaker, willing to
pay a premium for companies with drugs that show promise.
After
one of its hepatitis C compounds had setbacks in early testing, Gilead
acquired Sovaldi by buying Pharmasset Inc. for almost $11 billion in
2012, at a price that represented an 89 percent premium to Pharmasset’s
price before the deal was announced in November 2011. Gilead stock has
more than quadrupled since then.
‘Brilliant Transaction’
“It was a brilliant transaction,” said Geoffrey Porges,
an analyst at New York-based Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. “In
antivirals, Gilead has proven itself over and over again to be ahead of
the curve.”
At least half of Gilead’s $127 billion market value
is attributable to expectations for its hepatitis C drugs, according to
Porges. He said the company’s hepatitis C drugs could generate $16
billion in sales in 2016.
Sovaldi has attracted scrutiny over its high price. Pharmacy benefit managers such as Express Scripts Holding Co. (ESRX)
and Catamaran Corp. are discussing how to pit similar drugs against
each other by refusing to pay extra for a drug that is more convenient
to take than another, or by subjecting hepatitis C drugs to more outside
review, Bloomberg News reported in January.
‘Poster Child’
Sovaldi “is the poster child for everything that is wrong with drug prices,” Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles,
said in a phone interview. Sovaldi’s price will mean that some people
won’t get access to the treatment, he said. He has submitted a
shareholder resolution to tie executive compensation at Gilead to the
affordability of its medicines.
While formulary reviews proceed, patients who need Sovaldi can still get it, Miller said.
“Almost
without exception, prescriptions are being approved by commercial
plans,” she said. The company has started a program to provide financial
assistance to patients who need help paying for the drug, she said.
