What disease is 700,000 tablets of Noxii sodium in the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA)?
It is reported that spinal muscular atrophy is a rare hereditary neuromuscular disease, also known as "the killer of hereditary diseases in infants". SAM can be divided into SMA-I, II, III and IV according to the age of onset and the mileage obtained. Without treatment, most SMA-I children will not survive to the age of two. At present, the only drug used to treat this disease in China is Nocinasheng Sodium Injection.
Why is Nosey sodium so expensive? The first is new drugs.
The research and development cost of new drugs is very high. The American Journal of Medicine published a paper in March this year, and estimated that the average cost of developing new drugs from 2009 to 20 18 was1300 million dollars and 9 billion yuan. At the same time, the patent protection period of new drugs is only 20 years. Twenty years later, pharmaceutical companies all over the world can imitate them at will and are worthless. Therefore, it must return the research and development expenses within 20 years, and at the same time let investors make money. Otherwise, who is willing to invest in research and development of new drugs?
The second reason is that it is a drug for rare diseases.
There are less than 500,000 SMA patients in the world, while there are only 30,000-50,000 SMA patients in China. With the decrease of patients, the road of small profits but quick turnover has been blocked. In order to recover the cost, it can only be expensive Nosina sodium injection was introduced by Bojian Company. In order to treat SMA, there is actually another drug called Zolgensma, which was introduced by Novartis Pharmaceutical Company at a price of $26,543,800, and is called "the most expensive drug in the world".
There is no special view on how to treat 700,000 injections of Nosey sodium. Rare diseases have a small audience, which leads to high research and development costs. Pharmaceutical companies are not welfare organizations, and all scientific research purposes are for profit.
The low price used abroad is not low price. There is little difference in the global pricing of this drug. The difference lies in the better insurance system and a large number of government subsidies in western countries. It is unrealistic to expect pharmaceutical companies to reduce prices in China at present. We can only expect government departments to provide additional subsidies for rare diseases of children.