Alnylam Pharmaceuticals Inc. said it’s stopping work on a treatment for a rare eye disease because of a new US drug-pricing law with the potential to limit how much it could charge for the medication in the future.
Alnylam will not begin a planned late-stage trial of its drug Amvuttra for Stargardt disease, which causes blindness, while it examines the Inflation Reduction Act, the company said Thursday in its third-quarter earnings statement. The shares fell 2.7% as of 10:47 a.m. in New York.
Under the act, the US government will be able to negotiate prices for a small subset of drugs in the Medicare program for seniors. The law targets drugs that Medicare spends the most money on and have been on the market for years, and drug companies like Alnylam have argued that it discourages investment in new medicines.
Amvuttra is already approved to treat a rare disease called transthyretin-mediated amyloidosis, and Alnylam was exploring Stargardt disease as a second indication. The company charges $463,500 per patient a year for the drug and in the third quarter, its first full quarter on the market, the company reported $25 million in revenue from it.
Alnylam isn’t moving forward with adding the second indication because the act exempts drugs with one rare-disease use from price negotiations. The list of drugs subject to negotiations is limited to the 50 Medicare spends the most money on by 2029, and it’s not clear whether Amvuttra would fall into that category.
Alnylam is “...
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