'We can end HIV': Groundbreaking preventative drug to be rolled out for $40 a year from 2027
'We can end HIV': Groundbreaking preventative drug to be rolled out for $40 a year from 2027
40 dollars in low income countries. 28,000 dollars in the united states. The drug is made in the united states.
WTF.
Makes you wonder if Trump has a point.
But thanks to RFK and Trump, there will be no more drugs like this in the future. Gilead did the trials, but 95% of the effort behind this was NIH funded. We can't even guess how many game changing drugs have been cut in 2025.
As always Trump completely misunderstands the situation. Yes there’s a point in how exepnsive drugs are in the us, especially relative to other countries. But whether it’s manufactured in the us has almost nothing to do with it.
The problem is recovering all the development costs from American patients, and more recently just charging what they think the market will bear. We have to fix the complex maze of healthcare and all the levels of profiteering, we have to fix how development costs can be recovered and most of all we need to fix charging what the market will bear. Has everyone already forgotten the outcry over insulin a few years ago. A ceo who should be in jail decided to start charging ten or twenty times the cost, because he could, because us patients are a captive market. Then got away with saying “some of you can use these coupons….”. There’s definitely a point where exploitive business practices have crossed the line and should be considered criminal acts
speaking as a indian - the reason that this is possible because we kinda ignore medical patents and formulations. (using kinda because i do not know the exact wording in law and the cooldown period).
It should also tell you about the cost of ingredients and manufacturing vs the costs you pay for "rnd for big companies" (who often build upon work done by universities which often are run by public fundiing)
Pharmaceutical companies used to do basic research until the 90s. At this point, they are just banks who buy biotechs spun out from NIH research.
Now that NIH is gone, the industry will atrophy within a decade. There will be no new drugs.
15 years on patent drugs.
Those companies spend more on advertising than RND
I figured this would come up but you've gotta remember that drugs are expensive as hell to develop. And it just received US approval in June so it's not like they have been sitting on this making money for years.
The cost of drug development is vastly overstated as an excuse. The reality is $100-200M, but pharma expects $14B++ in returns. Little of that goes back into basic research.
The front end of costs was spent by the NIH, and after that was ended, Pharma is not taking up the slack. It's not sustainable and pharma will die in a decade.
ok so US citizens are supposed to subsidize the cost of the drug for the entire planet???
$80 in the US. Because our president is a buffoon
Free with many insurances though! It may take a little longer to get a "Prior Authorization," but as long as you say you're in an at-risk group for HIV (Google these) it will eventually get approved.
The rationale is that since treating HIV+/AIDS is so astronomically more expensive than merely paying for this once every 6 months PrEP, that insurance actuaries determine the latter to be way more in the insurance company's interest.
This is good since it doesn't require the insurance companies to be ethical, just cheap. But a win-win is still a win-win, so I say take it where you can get em. {Former pharmacist here, feel free to reach out and ask how to get non-addictive drugs covered} 🪿
banned in the us. because the president and health secretary is a bag of dicks.
And anti vaxxers will make some bullshit claim, making idiots believe it, and it'll only halfway eliminate HIV.
Not just them, but the religious fuckers who want everyone to suffer "consequences" for the sin of sex. Same ones that freak out about HPV vaccine.
I know there is a lot of overlap. But it isn't total.
At least this way you can save most of the smart ones.
Religious people often have smart kids. They need protection.
You know what, if you have HIV and throw your lot in with them then you've only got yourself to blame. If they had their way they'd throw you down a well for having it.
Sounds like a good thing therefore the brainworm in charge of health here in the states will surely get it banned. Or at least made to cost several thousand percent more than it costs to make.
$40 a year somewhere else? That'll be $40K a year in america.
Thank goodness the west coast states have created their own health consortium and a bunch of east coast states have followed suit. I live in one of those east coast states, and just got a covid booster no questions asked. It is also covered 100% by my insurance.
So do I and I did the same and it was so easy. I felt hella privileged sitting in that chair this year.
Generic versions of a groundbreaking injectable HIV-prevention drug should be available for $40 a year in more than 100 countries from 2027, Unitaid and the Gates Foundation said Wednesday.
…
Marketed under the brand name Yeztugo by California-based Gilead Sciences, lenacapavir currently costs around $28,000 a year in the United States.
FUCK GILEAD
clearly they should have tried a smaller time frame to get a more reasonable price
generic versions of a groundbreaking injectable drug to prevent HIV
The two organisations have entered into separate agreements with Indian pharmaceutical companies to produce cheaper generic versions of lenacapavir – a twice-yearly injection shown to reduce the risk of HIV transmission by more than 99.9 percent – for [more than 100] low- and middle-income countries.
Marketed under the brand name Yeztugo by California-based Gilead Sciences, lenacapavir currently costs around $28,000 a year in the United States.
Just to clarify the potentially confusing title. This drug came out three months ago in the US, is a version of PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis) that only needs to be taken every six months, and is free with most insurances if you're in an at-risk demo.
the article says it costs around $28,000. i don' mean to interrogate bu' d'ya have a source saying taht insurance covers that all
Since the Affordable Care Act it's been a legal mandate for all non-grandfathered-in insurances to cover all A & B recommendations with zero copay, which includes PrEP. Sources: HIV.gov, USPSTF.
Any disease that specializes in inserting itself into the host genome and then eradicating their immune system needs to be wiped out.
Oh no! Quick! Cut their Funding!
-The USA!
No no, keep their funding but make a Pharmaceutical company around it and only release pills with enough potency to treat instead of cure
"Hey Jimmy, you weren't at work yesterday"
"oh, my AIDS was acting up but I took some Rubitussin, I'm fine now."
"We can end HIV":
...as long as we can convince everyone to take it. So, yeah. Good luck with that.
You don't need to convince everyone, just enough people.
Were already seeing really good progress with pills and condoms, so an option which doesn't need to be taken on a strict daily schedule will be a huge boon.
"Preventative drug"? Is this what we're calling vaccines now?
There are No vaccines for HIV. This is a drug that if taken continually will prevent the virus from taking hold.
It is an interesting what makes the distinction.
The core principle of vaccination is training the immune system with a substance so that a disease can be defeated later on.
Nothing says that a vaccine needs to be an injection. There are injection vaccines that need multiple doses before the immune system reaches a certain level.
So why would a pill that trains your immune system not be a vaccine?
vaccine is a scientific term, meaning a weaker (or, rather, as weak as scientifically possible) version of the same virus / bacteria, so that immune system could learn to fight it without dying in the process.
This is not a vaccine, as has an active substance, that chemically interacts either with our body, HIV's shell, or both
There are more ways, weak virus, dead virus, modified virus, payload swap virus and an mRNA blast.
Would love to see this HIV vac get more development and become permanent and a part of infant vaccine routine until it just fucking dies.
MRNA vaccine works differently if I remember well. Basically instead of injecting the weaker virus itself, they trick the body to produces non-active parts of that pathogens in order to train the body.
We can :) But, we probably won't :(
The Gates Foundation also announced Wednesday that it had entered into a similar partnership with Indian pharmaceutical company Hetero.
That's for bigots to not being ashamed of taking pills against sexually transmited diseases? See, Hetero is in it's very name, so it's fine!
That’s ok, I’m sure it won’t be allowed to sell in the us. Profits will be intact
Yes, the US won't get the Hetero, they'll only get the sparkly $28000 version, called the Homo.
But what about the Tylenol?
is it called prep?
Yeah I hate to say it, but I worked in HIV prevention in the late 2000s, and we really thought prep was going to be the end of HIV, along with rigorous testing and linkage to care.
Since then, HIV rates have exploded in many areas, silently, because we've gone fully regressive on sex ed.
I have friends that became HIV positive before they even knew about prep.
WTF happened.
$40.
What, are you crazy?
I don't have that kind of money!
Then you should have sex with as many rich people as possible then die as quickly and quietly as possible, there's a good chap.
Best regards, Your corporate overlords
quickly, sure. quietly, well, when this cannon goes it'll be loaded
Pastors: NO! How will I condemn the gays now?!
Capitalism: That's great but what's the profit margin?
Fascists: That drug causes autism, use this one instead (that just so happens to also profit us)