Based on information from vademec.ru
Sanofi is to become the first distributor in Russia to provide medicine from the American pharmaceutical company Vertex. The products to be distributed and their prices have yet to be announced. In the USA, the cost for a treatment cycle with Vortex drugs can reach $300 thousand for one patient for one year.
In Russia, the only medication currently available is for treating the effects of the disease. Vertex drugs are the ones in the world aimed and treating the cause (etiotropic treatment).
Vertex has registered three specialized drugs worldwide: Symdeco (tezacaftor+ivacaftor), Orkambi (lumacaftor+ivacaftor), and Kalydeco (ivacaftor). A package of each of these drugs in the USA costs roughly $20 thousand, and one year of treatment can reach $300 thousand. At the time of publishing, Sanofi and Vertex representitives have yet to respond to Vademecum’s requests.
Cystic fibrosis is included in the state-funded 12 Nosologies financial program. At the moment, only Pulmozyme (dornase alfa) by Roche is available to 12 Nosologies patients, which is localized in terms of packaging at Pharmastandard’s facilities. In 2018, the Ministry of Health purchased 1.3 billion rubles worth of Pulmozyme.
The availability of Vertex has already become a difficult topic of negotiation between the manufacturer and healthcare bodies from different countries; for example, in February, the company turned down an offer from the British NHS for 500 million pounds for 5-year access to Orkambi for 10 thousand patients.