Daraprim, generically known as pyrimethamine, is mainly used to treat parasitic infection that can become a life-threatening complication for babies born to women who were infected during pregnancy, and also for AIDS patients and certain cancer patients who have a compromised immune system.
The 62-year old drug used to manage toxoplasmosis was acquired by Turing Pharmaceuticals last August, and later on had its price hiked up to 5000 percent in just a single night.
From $13.50 per tablet, the price of the 'specialty' drug jumped to $750.
In a New York Times report, Martin Shkreli, founder and chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals, said that the price increase was necessary for them to make an alternative drug that has similar or more effects to the recent one, but without the side effects. "This isn't the greedy drug company trying to gouge patients, it is us trying to stay in business," said Shkreli.
He also said that their company also plans on investing in the marketing and education tools that will make people become more aware of the disease.
Shkreli also said that Daraprim is being used by patients for less than a year and that the increased price of $750 is now more in line with other drugs used to treat rare diseases.
"This is still one of the smallest pharmaceutical products in the world," he said. "It really doesn't make sense to get any criticism for this," the chief executive added.
Daraprim was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1953. It was sold by GlaxoSmithKline for $1 per tablet. CorePharma bought the United States marketing rights of Daraprim from GlaxoSmithKline. Impax Laboratories bought CorePharma and all its affiliated companies last year for $700 million, and in August on this year, Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the drug for $55 million.
Some patients may need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for their annual treatment. Even with their medical insurance, they would still pay $150 for a tablet of Daraprim.
