How Gilead Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising H.I.V. Therapy

This is in the NY Times. Sorry if it's behind a paywall, but here's the gist of it:
How a Drug Maker Profited by Slow-Walking a Promising H.I.V. Therapy

Quote:

In 2004, Gilead Sciences decided to stop pursuing a new H.I.V. drug. The public explanation was that it wasn’t sufficiently different from an existing treatment to warrant further development. In private, though, something else was at play. Gilead had devised a plan to delay the new drug’s release to maximize profits, even though executives had reason to believe it might turn out to be safer for patients, according to a trove of internal documents made public in litigation against the company.

Shows how patents might actually slow down innovation. Historically, we are told, the primary purpose of the patent system is to "encourage innovation."

This so-called "patent extension strategy" would be to delay the development of an improved version of the drug that "Gilead executives knew had the potential to be less toxic to patients’ kidneys and bones than the earlier iteration, according to internal memos" until just before the patent on the earlier version was set to expire (in 2017). The list price for one new version of the drug that is protected until 2031 now is $26,000 annually, whereas generic versions of Truvada now cost less than $400 per year.

Quote:

Today, a generation of expensive Gilead drugs containing the new iteration of tenofovir account for half of the market for H.I.V. treatment and prevention, according to IQVIA, an industry data provider. One widely used product, Descovy, has a sticker price of $26,000 annually. Generic versions of its predecessor, Truvada, whose patents have expired, now cost less than $400 a year.

I'm not surprised or scandalized by this, it just confirms that maximizing profits is a higher priority for these companies than the needs of patients. And yes, an argument could be made that because research and development of new drugs is expensive, they really have no choice but to maximize profits by gaming the patent protection system.

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/WZHdPO8