Novartis $475,000 Price Tag Sets the Stage for a Price War With Gilead Sciences
On Monday, Gilead Sciences' (NASDAQ: GILD) wowed investors with an $11.9 billion deal to buy clinical-stage CAR-T drugmaker Kite Pharma (NASDAQ: KITE), and on Wednesday, the FDA approved Novartis' (NYSE: NVS) CAR-T, Kymriah, making it the first CAR-T to secure a regulatory green light. With Novartis pricing Kymriah at an eye-popping $475,000, and the two companies on course to compete against one another for market share as soon as next year, investors are right to wonder if Gilead Sciences will price its CAR-T drugs similarly, or undercut Novartis.
Chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, or CAR-T, helps the immune system find cancer by reengineering T-cells so that they can spot and bind to proteins expressed on the surface of cancer cells.
Image source: Getty Images.
Source: Fool.com
