Cell Therapeutics reaches price deal with German insurer GKV-SV on Pixuvri

US biotech firm Cell Therapeutics (Nasdaq: CTIC) has concluded an agreement with the Germany’s National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Funds (GKV-Spitzenverband) for Pixuvri (pixantrone).

Pixuvri is the first medicinal product approved in the European Union for patients with aggressive B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) who have failed two or three prior lines of therapy. However, the German drugs watchdog the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) earlier this year ruled that the drug had not shown additional benefit over comparators (The Pharma Letter May 21). The G-BA also decided that the prescribability for pixantrone should be limited to hematologists and oncologists and that this limitation might be of relevance for the GKV-SV, with regard to the therapy cost, since the cost for Pixuvri was only marginally higher than that of the appropriate comparative therapy.

Price deal seen as “fair” by CellThera