Drug pricing watchdog ICER issued a draft report on bluebird bio’s gene therapy betibeglogene autotemcel for beta-thalassemia. The report touted the therapy’s cost-effectiveness.
Courtesy of Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Drug pricing watchdog ICER, the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, issued a draft report on bluebird bio’s gene therapy betibeglogene autotemcel for beta-thalassemia. Despite the proposed price tag of $2.1 million, ICER’s not-yet-finalized report supports the therapy’s cost-effectiveness. This is good news for the recently beleaguered company.
Gene therapies are typically designed to “cure” a disease by replacing or fixing a damaged gene. Bluebird’s therapy, which is listed under the brand name Zynteglo, had been approved in Europe and the UK, where its price is around $1.7 million (U.S.). However, the company pulled the therapy off the market in Europe over what it called a hostile pricing and reimbursement environment.
On April 5, bluebird bio announced it was beginning a comprehensive restructuring in hopes of cutting $160 million in costs over the next two years. It planned to re-focus on near-term catalysts, which include Zynteglo in the U.S., gene therapy for cerebral adrenoleukodystrophy (eli-cel) and a potential biologics license application (BLA) for lovotibeglogene autotemcel (lovo-cel) gene therapy for sickle cell disease. The BLA application is planned for 2023, while the U.S. regulatory decisions are expected this year. The PDUFA date for Zynteglo is Aug.19, 2022, and Sept. 16, 2022, for eli-cel.
As part of the restructuring, the company is cutting its workforce by about 30%.
ICER recommendations aren’t binding, but they have influence. If ICER says a drug is overpriced, it provides ammunition for payers, such as Medicare and insurers, to push back against proposed prices.
Gene therapies are very expensive. For example, Novartis’ Zolgensma, the one-time gene therapy onasemnogene abeparvovec for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), is generally viewed as the most expensive drug with a price tag of $2.1 million. On the other hand, as an apparent “cure” for a disease that kills children by the age of two, it is very rare. The argument for these therapies, aside from their curative potential for otherwise incurable diseases, is that over the life of the patient, they are cost-effective.
Novartis and Spark Therapeutics’s gene therapy Luxturna (voretigene neparvovec) runs about $850,000 per patient in the U.S. The therapy is for inherited retinal dystrophy with RPE65 mutations. It is typically diagnosed in childhood and eventually causes almost total blindness, and the therapy is essentially a cure.
Beta thalassemia is a genetic disease that impairs the ability of red blood cells to manufacture hemoglobin, the molecule in the body that carries oxygen. There are about 40,000 newly diagnosed cases in children each year around the world. People with the most severe form of it develop life-threatening anemia around four to six months of age and have to receive monthly blood transfusions and other treatments, such as iron-chelating drugs. The only other potential cure is hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) but requires a donor with a matching human leukocyte antigen (HLA) profile within the appropriate age range.
Bluebird’s Zynteglo appears to be another option for a cure, although how long the therapy’s effects last is something of an open question. The ICER report noted the uncertainties, but concluded that “the evidence suggests that beti-cel provides net health benefits to patients with TDT.”
The ICER report indicated, per Managed Healthcare Executive, that “patients could be treated without reaching the potential budget impact threshold at three prices (about $1.85 million, $2.11 million and $2.38 million per course of treatment). This analysis was done at several prices to document the percentage of patients who could be treated without crossing a potential budget impact threshold that is aligned with the overall growth in the U.S. economy.”
In Phase III trials, 89% of patients who received the therapy became transfusion independent, and in Phase I/II and III trials, those patients remained transfusion-free for at least 42 months. In general, side effects were mild and no deaths were reported. In December 2021, bluebird presented data at the American Society of Hematology meeting from a long-term study (LTF-303) that showed adult and pediatric patients with beta-thalassemia who required regular red blood cell transfusions can produce normal or near-normal levels of total hemoglobin and remain transfusion-free with stable iron markers up to seven years after receiving beti-cel.
A 2017 study published in Blood found that on average, beta-thalassemia patients required 17 transfusions per year, 23 days apart. Mean total healthcare costs for the patients were $128,062, plus or minus $62,260 per year. Total costs were primarily driven by chelation and transfusion costs.
Although the severity of the disease varies, a 2009 study found that people with beta-thalassemia major “often die from cardiac complications of iron overload by 30 years of age,” making bluebird’s new therapy, if it is successful, vital for these patients.
