Dr. Ted W. Love, the former president and CEO of Global Blood Therapeutics (and chair of BIO), explains why recent policy actions would block cures from reaching more patients.
What’s happening: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued to block Amgen from acquiring Horizon Therapeutics, which “will surely chill merger-and-acquisition activity,” writes Dr. Love in STAT News.
Why it matters: “Mergers and partnerships are critical to ensure resources to conduct expensive clinical trials, secure regulatory approval, and then manufacture and distribute medicine at a national or global scale. This type of deal-making is particularly important for small companies,” he writes.
He knows from experience: GBT developed the first drug targeting the root cause of sickle cell disease, which has a disproportionate impact on people of African descent—but GBT “could not have reached patients in lower-income countries, where child mortality from sickle cell disease is much greater, without being acquired by Pfizer.”
Another “worrisome policy change”: the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes “government price setting” that “singles out small-molecule drugs,” such as GBT’s Oxbryta.
He knows about that, too: “During the decade before we were acquired, Global Blood Therapeutics raised more than $1.5 billion and never turned a profit. That capital, in turn, allowed us to help a population long mistreated and ignored by the medical establishment. But I doubt this would have been possible if price controls had been looming — and it would have been even less likely with government policies that penalized the type of drugs that we developed,” he explains.
Read and share the whole thing in STAT News. (It’s really good.)
