Competition in insulin will be good. Here is a cheaper manufacturing process, which suggests, but does not guarantee, lower prices. Will investors in rBIO seek profit maximization by price-gouging, counter to the company’s stated mission, or by driving prices down to grab market share? And what about when others come into the market? Well, we’ll see.
My thanks to arhpdx for putting this story into a Good News Roundup.
Wired: A Startup Has Unlocked a Way to Make Cheap Insulin
It looks like the expiration of the patents used by Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi, who have greedily jacked up the US prices of insulin and other diabetes treatments to ridiculous levels, is finally allowing some innovation in the production of biosimilar insulin that will ultimately save patients thousands of dollars. The illustration above shows several variations on insulin’s amino acid chains that turn out to have nearly identical biological functions.
One biotech startup, rBIO of Houston, is aiming to make insulin more affordable by producing a copycat version of the drug—known as a biosimilar. It’s not the only company developing biosimilar insulin, but it says it has invented a new process to do so using custom-made bacteria.
CEO Cameron Owen says his company has created novel strains of bacteria that can produce insulin at twice the yield than is currently possible. Thursday, rBIO announced it had completed lab tests of its biosimilar insulin to determine that it is structurally and functionally similar to a brand-name one. It plans to begin a clinical trial later this year to determine whether its insulin works as well as a product already on the market. “The high price of insulin is nothing short of price gouging,” Owen says. A 2020 estimate by the RAND Corporation put the average list price of a vial of insulin at $98 in the US compared with $12 in Canada and $7.52 in the UK. Three manufacturers have long dominated the US insulin market—Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, and Sanofi.
Continuing…
These companies set the list prices for insulin…
Up to a point determined by new laws and regulations limiting costs of insulin and mandating price negotiations with Medicare, as we have long had with military Tricare, with the VA, and with Medicaid. Those new negotiations are under way, and will result in much lower prices for the first ten drugs on the list starting in 2026.
…and work with intermediaries called pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, to get their products covered by health insurance plans. Drug manufacturers often pay PBMs rebates or offer discounts to get a prime placement. As rebates got larger, insulin manufacturers raised their list prices to keep up. Patients, meanwhile, don’t benefit from these rebates. The practice has helped fuel the increase in insulin prices.
✂️ some key patents have expired, and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has paved the way for biosimilar versions of insulin—so-called because they’re almost identical to another product already on the market. ✂️ Owen’s company, founded in 2020, has designed supercharged E. coli-like bacteria that can produce much greater amounts of insulin than existing strains used in insulin production.
rBIO Succeeds in Biomanufacturing Insulin
rBIO Achieves Crucial Milestone on Mission to Lower the Cost of Insulin by 30%
rBIO, an early-stage synthetic biology company focused on reducing the cost of prescription drugs, has announced its first in-lab milestone: synthetic production of human insulin.
FDA: Biosimilar Basics for Patients
Insulin Analog Preparations and Their Use in Children and Adolescents with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus
Big Pharma
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