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Comment by cowsandmilk | Hacker News Reader

My immediate question was "how are they getting sofosbuvir for $300?" That is literally Sovaldi and one of the components of Harvoni, which is what the article is comparing this to?

Well, they are getting it that cheap because Gilead (the company selling HCV drugs for $84k in the US) licensed it as a generic for sale for this purpose[1].

So, no, this nonprofit didn't discover some cure out of nowhere, they created a combination therapy that uses one of the components of the $84K drug that is available inexpensively due to the owner of the $84k drug licensing that component for generic manufacture in that area of the world.

[1] https://in.reuters.com/article/gilead-sciences-india/gilead-...

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From what I understand, Gilead and many other companies do provide some meds at cost to countries that don't have a system to pay for high priced drugs, especially if they are important drugs for large groups of sick patients

Part of this is a corporate social responsibility thing, but part of it is because many of these drugs are purchased and distributed by entities that sometimes cut and dilute expensive drugs and resell them. This hurts patients and tarnishes the brand of the company. Selling their products at cost removes this incentive and allows patients to access the medicines in their unadulterated form

So the pharma companies incentives aren't entirely altruistic but it helps patients in the end

This and just the economics of it. It makes sense to sell at what price the market can handle, as long as it's above direct production cost (which it is). It's basically cheap marketing that happens to align with patient interests.

edit: A lot of it is also politics with the host country. India for example has said it will produce cheap generics of drugs if it wants to, ignoring patents: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2013/04/08/indias...

I am curious about the age of that particular component (and skimming the linked article didn't seem like a detailed read would reveal anything of substantive detail).

Maybe the modern expensive pre-packaged mixer of drugs is an attempt at re-patenting the actually effective and already existing drug and keeping generics (which could be manually prescribed with the other beneficial ingredients as separate medications) off the market.

The components of the drugs are individually not generic and very expensive in the US. Sofusbuvir was discovered in 2007

Sofusbuvir is combined with other drugs (specifically ledipasvir) because it improves cure rates. Because the individual components are still on patent, prescribing each individually would cost more than prescribing the combo

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