Gilead may charge $4,500 for coronavirus treatment drug, report reveals

HaloVax Founder and the director of Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center at MGH Dr. Mark Poznansky joins Yahoo Finance’s Zack Guzman to discuss the latest coronavirus developments, as cases climb over 3.5 million globally.

Video Transcript

ZACK GUZMAN: Right now, updates from President Trump in regards to expectations of how this country is responding to the coronavirus crisis. He told Fox News in a virtual town hall that he does expect as many as 100,000 Americans could die from COVID-19 as the crisis continues and states reopen their economies.

We did hear from Governor Andrew Cuomo here in New York earlier today saying that it's not actually feasible to expect the lockdown to continue indefinitely and that things will inevitably have to reopen, but a lot of questions surrounding how that can be done well in this environment.

And a lot of that hinges on two things, mainly the progress being made on the vaccine front as well as Gilead Sciences' drug remdesivir and the way that that's proven effective in helping patients battle COVID-19.

And some interesting research on that front in regards to how much it might cost. A new report from watchdog drug-pricing group the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review put out its initial review for Gilead Sciences' remdesivir drug saying that it could cost as much as $4,500 per drug patient out there, and that number is drawing some headlines and some skepticism there. But for more on that, I want to dig on-- dig into it with our next guest in regards to how much that drug should actually cost, how it should be rolled out, and what promises we have for vaccine research. Joining us is Dr. Mark Poznansky, HaloVax Founder and the Director of Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center at Massachusetts General Hospital.

And Dr. Poznansky, when we look at this, the president did give an update that he thought the vaccine for COVID-19 could come as soon as this year, which would be a little bit ahead of some people's projections. So what's your take on the progress on the vaccine front and whether or not that can actually happen?

MARK POZNANSKY: Well, I think there's some very major and very much fixed issues that have to be dealt with when you're designing a vaccine which take time in order to achieve to get to, like, an effective vaccine. And these things-- there are things that you can shorten the time period. There are others that are just take time, like just building the vaccine, building it in enough doses that you can test it for safety, doing the safety studies, make sure you've got the readouts that show that the vaccine is actually protective. That all takes time, and I'm not sure how-- like certain things you can make a little bit shorter, but other ones like readouts, clinical readouts on safety, actually take time and a lot of doses to be given to a lot of people to be able to sure-- be sure that the vaccine is safe.

So, you know, the 12 to 18 months that I've been hearing from Dr. Fauci sort of make sense. There are maybe areas of that that could be shortened. But the end of the year sounds aggressive at best.

And it also cannot supersede the actual biology of this virus, which we're also learning at the same time as we're designing a vaccine. We're sort of laying the tracks--

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah.

MARK POZNANSKY: --at the same time as building a vaccine, if you see what I mean.

ZACK GUZMAN: No, I mean, that's the hard part about hitting a moving target here is you're always constantly learning more things, but you're right to highlight Dr. Fauci's timeline. It's not quite as optimistic as President Trump's there. So, I mean, if you were to kind of put-- obviously you're an expert in this when we think about people-- perfect people to talk to you. When you look at it, maybe put a percentage chance on actually getting everything right enough to meet that deadline or by the end of the year, what would you say, in your expertise, might be the percent probability of that actually happening?

MARK POZNANSKY: I think it's really hard to do. It's really hard to do. I think the percentage chance is much greater that we could be at something within a year to 18 months. I mean, it's what the most, you know, experienced vaccinologists-- even with the ones-- the vaccines that are currently entering human studies now would say because they have to pile sort of the hurdles that are currently out there. Now, if some of those hurdles get removed, that will make a difference. But at the moment, I'd stick with the most likely timetable is at 12. To 18 months, even with those that have already initiated in first-in-human studies.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah.

MARK POZNANSKY: And I just want to go back to this point about the-- you know, it's sort of like the devil is in the detail, and no one really wants to look at the detail. The detail is, as of today, we don't yet know what a protective immune response to the virus is. So we're building a vaccine to generate a protective response that we don't quite yet know what it is. So whether that's going to be three months, six months, or a year is the fundamental sort of biology of this that you almost can't get away from. It's like the gravity of virus development. It's just out there, and it has to be addressed.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah. No, it's a very important point and also important too when you think about all the issues that we've had on antibody testing on that front too also weighed into all that when you think about the immunoresponse to this virus and how difficult it is to judge.

But with all those concerns out there on the vaccine front, it does kind of make the drug progress even more important when we look at Gilead Sciences' remdesivir. And we did get that report out over the weekend highlighting that it could cost as much as $4,500 per dose needed for a COVID-19 patient. But when you're looking at that, it is interesting because President Trump brought up AIDS and the HIV virus there in terms of how it might relate to how we respond here, but it's obviously a very different virus when we think about how it's passed from human to human.

So, I mean, when you look at the cost associated and the steps forward to deliver a drug like this to the global population, how should the industry be thinking about pricing? What do you make of that estimate of about $4,500? What's the way to think about it when you think about a novel virus like this?

MARK POZNANSKY: Well, I think-- I mean, I'm giving you the academic physician answer to that. Obviously we would like drugs that are as potentially influential in treating disease as remdesivir to be as cheap and as widely available as possible. So, you know, that's our bottom line. You know, as physicians, we'd like to be able to give this to patients of every-- in every country and every nation in order to treat this disease.

I think the reality is that obviously industry decides on it, but governments have a big role to play in this in helping guide that and guide the demand. I would say that at present remdesivir is being trialed in the most severely ill patients. It's an intravenous drug. That doesn't make it accessible to people walking down the street to take an intravenous drug to prevent COVID infection. So it's a niche at this time. It has the projection of being within a niche market around severe disease.

And I would say one other thing. One thing I do want to take away from is the fact that despite all of this, I'm hopeful that all of this drug development will get to a drug that changes the course of the disease, but I would say we haven't seen the final report on the Gilead remdesivir trial. We've heard the top-line reports on this. You know, again, the devil of the detail-- the devil in the detail is the detail of how the trial was executed, the patient groups, the comparisons between the different centers. And I think the judgment on this has to be held to-- the final judgment has to be held on the final details of the clinical trial.

ZACK GUZMAN: Yeah. No, it's a very good point, and it's also worth highlighting that we also got those results from Gilead after a study in China was also not exactly delivering positive data on what happened there, though it was cut short based on the patients in that study.

But very fascinating stuff. Dr. Mark Poznansky from MGH on that, and I appreciate you taking the time. Obviously a lot of detail to dig through here, but I appreciate you boiling it down for us today.

MARK POZNANSKY: Thank you very much.