[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Opinion on efforts to find prior art on outr...
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       Ask HN: Opinion on efforts to find prior art on outrageous priced
       drugs
        
       Dear HNers,  You may have read this article:
       https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/17/health/zolgensma-sma-gene-therapy-
       drug-pricing-propublica/index.html  To over-simplify the article,
       it's about a non-profit that financed pre-clinical studies on a
       genetic disease that strikes infants: SMA.
       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_muscular_atrophy  Once the
       pre-clinical studies were finished, contacts with the non-profit
       were much less frequent, and in the end, the drug was approved by
       the FDA. The price is more than $2 million per dose.  This drug,
       Zolgensma, involves administering an AAV9 virus capsid containing
       an SMN1 transgene. Today, commercial companies have mastered this
       technology, are very efficient, and can produce it at little cost.
       I wonder if there could be a collaborative effort to lower the
       price of such drugs. One way would be to find alternate providers
       but a main roadblock is the intellectual property.  The first
       patents on this drug will expire in a few years (they were written
       in the mid-2000).  I know it's possible to make three kinds of
       attacks on PI:  - One would be to find an alternative PI not
       related to the original patents, but it requires pre-clinical
       studies. The competition of the patent holder would be pleased to
       finance such pre-clinical studies.  Another option is to find prior
       art to invalidate the patent. This seems weird, as there should
       have been at least prior art research before accepting a patent,
       yet it's feasible. I had the honor of participating in one.  - Then
       it's possible to evade a PI because the system of claims has a weak
       point. For example, let's say the administration of the drug is
       part of the claims, and that several claims depend on that
       particular. Then it would be trivial to create another patent with
       the same efficacy but with another administration route. Indeed
       this is only an example to make this last point clear, I don't
       claim it has some validity.  I assume there is no need to sue the
       patent holder as the mere existence of such a website would lower
       prices.  What do you think of the idea of creating a sort of
       website where a challenge will be presented: Find a strategy to
       enable lowering the price on this or that drug, and contributors
       could discuss and propose solutions. It would be a sort of GitHub
       project.  Thanks for your comments!
        
       Author : JPLeRouzic
       Score  : 4 points
       Date   : 2025-02-20 20:07 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
       | PaulHoule wrote:
       | The cost isn't justified by the cost of producing the dose, it's
       | justified by the cost of testing a drug like that divided by the
       | small number of recipients. Other gene therapies for rare
       | diseases are priced accordingly, insurance companies will pay
       | because they a worth a lot.
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-20 23:02 UTC)