Duchenne market to be an expensive place to be

Upcoming gene therapies for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) will cost $2 million per patient per year - double the cost of the current standard-of-care, exon-skipping therapies, says GlobalData.

The data and analytics company’s research highlighted the costs of various DMD treatment types as part of an assessment of the upcoming pipeline, and investigated to what extent the pipeline will meet the needs of DMD patients.

Chris Pilis, immunology analyst at GlobalData, said: “Aside from the highly genericized prednisone, therapies targeting DMD are very expensive. Exon-skipping products cost around $1 million per patient annually (depending on weight) and Emflaza, a second-generation steroid agent, costs approximately $175,000 to $275,000 per year.