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Economic Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Economic Times
Novartis offers payment plan for high-cost heart medicine
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Mumbai: In a first-of-its-kind pricing strategy in the pharmaceutical industry, Swiss drug major Novartis has introduced a financing scheme for its cholesterol lowering drug brand Sybrava (inclisiran) in India, as the company looks to expand the adoption of the new generation heart drug that has so far been restricted due to its high has tied up with Indian payment technology company Pine Labs to offer a monthly instalment scheme for the twice-a-year treatment of the injectable drug used to reduce levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), commonly called bad cholesterol."We have recently launched a zero-interest EMI scheme with Pine Labs so that this treatment can be accessible to more patients," Amitabh Dube, country president & MD, Novartis India, said in an exclusive interview with instalment is priced at Rs 15,000-16,000. "The first is a loading dose and the second dose is after 90 days, and then after 180 days. It will be a rolling cycle," said per cardiologists, Novartis has come up with a one-on-one scheme where the second injection will be free on purchase of the first a patient has to pay full value of the first dosage through equated monthly drug was priced at Rs 1.2 lakh per injection when it was launched in January 2024. In the US, sold under brand Leqvio, it is priced at $3,373.4 per dose (about Rs 2.9 lakh).More than 3,000 patients have currently been put on the drug in expand the reach for inclisiran, Novartis has also entered into marketing tie-ups with Mankind Pharma , JB Pharma and Lupin Mankind, which sells inclisiran under brand Crenzlo, is also evaluating possibilities in terms of patient assistance programmes that can make the drug more affordable to the eligible patients in India, said Atish Majumdar, senior president-sales and marketing. Lupin has launched the drug under Tilpazan, while JB Pharma's brand is and JB Pharma did not respond to ET's query until press time on the one year since April 2024, inclisiran recorded sales of Rs 7.7 crore among all three partners, according to data from is not a replacement for statins, the most commonly used class of medications to lower cholesterol, but can be recommended as a line of treatment when statins do not work or if a person is statin intolerant. However, top cardiologists are divided over the widespread prescribing of the opine it is another addition to their armament of treatment. "It is a very important drug that has come into the market. It has the potential to be a very big game changer for blockages," said Dr Nihar Mehta, associate director, Department of Structural Heart Diseases, Jaslok Hospital & Research others said its usage will be for a limited number of patients. Dr Ganesh Kumar AV, director of cardiology at LH Hiranandani Hospital Powai in Mumbai, said: "The medicine is good but it is being overused. With the right usage there are not many patients who need it. My usage of inclisiran has not been much over the last one year; maybe less than 10 out of the about 2,000 patients with coronary artery diseases I treated".
Time of India
5 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Novartis offers payment plan for high-cost heart medicine
Mumbai: In a first-of-its-kind pricing strategy in the pharmaceutical industry, Swiss drug major Novartis has introduced a financing scheme for its cholesterol lowering drug brand Sybrava (inclisiran) in India, as the company looks to expand the adoption of the new generation heart drug that has so far been restricted due to its high pricing. Novartis has tied up with Indian payment technology company Pine Labs to offer a monthly instalment scheme for the twice-a-year treatment of the injectable drug used to reduce levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), commonly called bad cholesterol. "We have recently launched a zero-interest EMI scheme with Pine Labs so that this treatment can be accessible to more patients," Amitabh Dube, country president & MD, Novartis India, said in an exclusive interview with ET. Each instalment is priced at Rs 15,000-16,000. "The first is a loading dose and the second dose is after 90 days, and then after 180 days. It will be a rolling cycle," said Dube. As per cardiologists, Novartis has come up with a one-on-one scheme where the second injection will be free on purchase of the first dose. However, a patient has to pay full value of the first dosage through equated monthly instalment. The drug was priced at Rs 1.2 lakh per injection when it was launched in January 2024. In the US, sold under brand Leqvio, it is priced at $3,373.4 per dose (about Rs 2.9 lakh). More than 3,000 patients have currently been put on the drug in India. To expand the reach for inclisiran, Novartis has also entered into marketing tie-ups with Mankind Pharma , JB Pharma and Lupin . Mankind, which sells inclisiran under brand Crenzlo, is also evaluating possibilities in terms of patient assistance programmes that can make the drug more affordable to the eligible patients in India, said Atish Majumdar, senior president-sales and marketing. Lupin has launched the drug under Tilpazan, while JB Pharma's brand is Izirize. Lupin and JB Pharma did not respond to ET's query until press time on Monday. In the one year since April 2024, inclisiran recorded sales of Rs 7.7 crore among all three partners, according to data from PharmaTrac. Inclisiran is not a replacement for statins, the most commonly used class of medications to lower cholesterol, but can be recommended as a line of treatment when statins do not work or if a person is statin intolerant. However, top cardiologists are divided over the widespread prescribing of the drug. Some opine it is another addition to their armament of treatment. "It is a very important drug that has come into the market. It has the potential to be a very big game changer for blockages," said Dr Nihar Mehta, associate director, Department of Structural Heart Diseases, Jaslok Hospital & Research Centre. However, others said its usage will be for a limited number of patients. Dr Ganesh Kumar AV, director of cardiology at LH Hiranandani Hospital Powai in Mumbai, said: "The medicine is good but it is being overused. With the right usage there are not many patients who need it. My usage of inclisiran has not been much over the last one year; maybe less than 10 out of the about 2,000 patients with coronary artery diseases I treated".
Mint
23-05-2025
- Health
- Mint
Strokes and heart attacks kill. New drugs are coming to prevent them.
Forty years after the first statin drug started lowering levels of artery-choking cholesterol, heart attacks and strokes remain the world's biggest killers. This year, we'll see test results on some drugs that cut cholesterol even more. Statins are cheap and effective drugs for reducing blood levels of the 'bad" cholesterol known as LDL, which gunks up arteries over time. A quarter of Americans have high LDL. But only about half of patients stay on their prescribed statins, and the drugs don't get LDL low enough in some 10% of patients. A pack of new cardiovascular drugs are being tried as pills, biweekly or semiannual shots, and even as once-for-a-lifetime infusions. And their benefits all seem additive to those of statins and each other. Successful trial results in the next few years could save thousands of lives and generate billions in new annual revenue for drugmakers. The companies working on them range from pharmaceutical companies—like Eli Lilly, Merck, and AstraZeneca—to biotechs—like Amgen and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals—to gene-editing specialists—like Crispr Therapeutics and Verve Therapeutics. Regeneron and Sanofi took the first big step beyond statins in 2015 with Praluent, a biweekly injection of antibodies that sop up the enzyme called PCSK9, which strongly effects blood levels of LDL. Amgen followed just weeks later, with the PCSK9 antibody Repatha. In 2021, Novartis launched Leqvio, which blocks the genetic instructions for making PCSK9 and can be injected just twice a year. The PCSK9 drugs are lifesavers for families with genetically-high LDL levels. But they require regular injections and can cost $30,000 a year for the rest of a patient's life. The cost and hassle has led to sales that are good, but not as great as expected. Regeneron and Sanofi's Praluent sales were $585 million in 2024. For the same year, Amgen's Repatha pulled in $2.2 billion, up 15% year over year. Last year's sales of Leqvio for Novartis were $260 million, up 80%. To address these drugs' cost and convenience issues, Merck is testing a pill treatment that it code-named MK-0616. The company is betting the drug will help replace some of the revenue it will lose after patents expire on its huge-selling cancer drug, Keytruda. On April 7, Merck finished the once-daily pill's Phase 3 trial in about 300 people with inherited high-LDL cholesterol. In August, it expects to complete the broader study among some 2,800 patients with serious cardiovascular problems. Both studies measure reductions in LDL—which regulators accept as good-enough proof that cardiovascular problems will also be prevented. Analysts hope the company will report results at the November 2025 meeting of the American Heart Association. Merck aims for a bigger market than just high-LDL families, so a third Phase 3 for MK-0616 will use the gold-standard test of whether those on the pill actually have fewer heart attacks, strokes, or other cardiovascular calamities. That study, which is enrolling over 14,000 people, won't finish until 2029. While Merck's pill could find its way to a larger population than today's PCSK9 injections, it still has some convenience issues. Patients have to take MK-0616 on an empty stomach and shouldn't be on certain other drugs. That's why AstraZeneca is pushing ahead with its own PCSK9 pill, dubbed AZD0780, which requires no fasting. In March, the company said the pill achieved deep reductions in LDL in a Phase 2 study on patients whose statin treatment wasn't doing the job. The size of the cardio market and the current PCSK9 drugs' issues have also caught the eye of the gene-editing industry. These companies' Crispr technology can zero in on a particular, troublesome stretch in the 3 billion links of our DNA, and then permanently inactivate it, or make a repair. So far, genetic-medicine firms have struggled to convince investors that there's real money to be made from the Nobel Prize-winning technology. Companies like Crispr Therapeutics initially focused on dire, but relatively uncommon diseases like sickle cell disorder. Revenue has been slow to come. Verve Therapeutics, however, focused on cardiovascular disease from the start. It licensed a second-generation Crispr technology called base-editing, from the company Beam Therapeutics. Base-editing gently changes a single letter at a time in DNA genetic code. By permanently disrupting the code for PCSK9, Verve's one-time treatment could lower LDL for life. The stock perked up in April when the company reported initial Phase 1 data that showed no serious side effects among 14 patients—with LDL reductions of around 60% even two years after the one-time treatment. That reduction is comparable to today's PCSK9 injectables. Eli Lilly has an option to partner on Verve's cardio programs, and could opt in this year. Other genetic-medicine approaches to PCSK9 are exploring nonpermanent, but long-lasting fixes. The privately held Scribe Therapeutics has reported intriguing results in monkeys from 'epigenetic" edits of the molecules that turn genes on and off. And PCSK9 isn't the only strong lever on cholesterol levels. Another that our body uses to control blood levels of cholesterol is a protein called CETP. Early in May, NewAmsterdam Pharma reported on a couple of Phase 3 trials of obicetrapib, its antibody that blocks CETP. By itself, the antibody cut LDL levels by a third. Combined with a statin, LDL levels fell by half. Another lever on LDL is ANGPTL3, a protein controlling blood levels of LDL and harmful triglycerides. Since 2021, Regeneron has marketed Evkeeza, an antibody that inhibits ANGPTL3. Sales of the drug to patients with inherited high cholesterol were $126 million in 2024. Lilly, Arrowhead Pharmaceuticals, and Regeneron are all testing so-called siRNA drugs that interfere with cellular production of ANGPTL3. They are injections that work for as long as a year at a time. Verve began Phase 1 trials in November 2024 on a base-editing treatment that permanently disrupts the genetic instructions for ANGPTL3. It hopes to report some data later this year. Crispr Therapeutics, meanwhile, is further along in trials of a one-and-done edit that blocks ANGPTL3. In April, it reported that LDL dropped by two-thirds, among the first 10 patients treated. No serious side effects surfaced in the first months after infusion. For rare but deadly disorders, gene-editing fixes are priced above $1 million. The Crispr crowd thinks it can find a price that is attractive to the healthcare payers that cover the expensive siRNA injections now given to patients with inherited high levels of cholesterol. 'If you're talking about siRNA, that is $30,000 a year for 50 years," said Crispr Therapeutics Chief Executive Samarth Kulkarni at an April conference. 'We could spend one-tenth of that and charge $150,000 for a single-shot therapy. For the payer, the economic argument is very clear." Write to Bill Alpert at
RTÉ News
29-04-2025
- Business
- RTÉ News
Novartis raises 2025 forecast after strong Q1 momentum
Novartis has today released a more optimistic full-year earnings forecast, citing the strong growth of drugs such as Leqvio, Kisqali and Kesimpta during the first quarter. The Swiss drugmaker said in a statement that it expects 2025 operating income, adjusted for special items, to grow by a "low double-digit" percentage. It had previously projected "high single to low double-digit" growth this year, compared with a 22% increase in 2024. First-quarter net income, adjusted for special items, rose 22% to $4.48 billion, surpassing an analyst consensus of about $4.2 billion. The company's breast cancer drug Kisqali saw quarterly revenues jump 52% to $956m, while sales of cholesterol-lowering drug Leqvio surged 70% to $257m, gaining momentum after a slow launch. Both beat market expectations. "We expect the strong quarter along with the 2025 guidance upgrade ... to be well-received," JP Morgan analysts said in a research note, adding that the analyst consensus on adjusted earnings for 2025 was set to rise by 1%. Novartis said this month it plans to spend $23 billion to build and expand 10 facilities in the US, as it grapples with threats of drug import duties by the Trump administration. Chief executive Vas Narasimhan said that the company had historically expanded capacity in Europe and other regions to serve the US, which is its biggest market. "We now want to ensure that 100% of the demand of our key products in the US is produced in the US," Narasimhan said in a media call, declining to provide details on volumes.
Business Recorder
29-04-2025
- Business
- Business Recorder
Novartis more upbeat on 2025 guidance after strong Q1 momentum
FRANKFURT: Novartis on Tuesday issued a more optimistic full-year earnings guidance, citing strong growth of drugs such as Kisqali, Kesimpta and Leqvio during the first quarter. The Swiss drugmaker said in a statement that it expects 2025 operating income, adjusted for special items, to grow by a 'low double-digit' percentage. Novartis agrees to acquire Anthos for up to $3.1 billion It had previously projected 'high single to low double-digit' growth, compared with a 22% increase in 2024.
