FDA should improve incentives to lower drug costs, says Dyadic CEO
Dyadic has developed a proprietary C1 Gene Expression Platform as a potential alternative to Chinese hamster (CHO) ovary based cell line production specifically to lower associated costs, as well as aiding faster development of biologics.
The company’s CEO, Mark Emalfarb, spoke to BioPharma-Reporter, about the need for the health care system structure to be reconsidered by the government, in a way that would allow for “cheaper and better drugs to reach more people.”
According to Emalfarb, this goal could be achieved if the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) expedited drugs with lower costs through the fast track approval processes.
Emalfarb explained that it is a ‘great thing’ to give fast track status to an enzyme therapy, which will save the lives of 500 patients, for example; But “why not [also] give fast track status to drugs coming through a new platform that will save 100 million lives?”, he asked.
“Is the life of a patient with an orphan disease worth more than these lives?,” Emalfarb asked, rhetorically. “I think they are equal, but we are ignoring the people that suffer because they do not have access to medicines.”
“The government needs to understand that there are potential solutions to high costs. As long as they ‘pass the buck’ to the consumer, the pharmaceutical companies do not have an incentive,” he added.
The biotechnology company recently entered a deal with the Serum Institute of India, which, according to Emalfarb, is the world’s lowest-cost vaccine producer, aiming to find more ways to develop and manufacture larger quantities of biologics at a lower cost.
Currently, Dyadic is working on the C1 platform to develop adeno-associate viral (AAV) vectors for gene therapies, seeing high potential on the results of these efforts, according to the company.
