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The drugs CEO who hiked his prices has just been massively undercut

The drugs CEO who hiked his prices has just been massively undercut

The CEO who raised the price of his Aids and cancer treatment drug overnight from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill now has a competitor, and they are offering the same drug for $1.

Imprimis Pharmaceuticals is a compounding drug firm, which has begun selling its own version of the drug, previously only marketed by Martin Shkreli’s company, Turing Pharmaceuticals.

Shkreli was roundly criticised after hiking prices of the Daraprim, which is typically used to treat Aids and cancer patients in chemotherapy, after he acquired the patent.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) and the HIV Medicine Association sent a joint letter to Turing in August, which said the price increase for Daraprim was “unjustifiable".

Imprimis’ version includes pyrimethamine and leucovorin, which are the active ingredients in Daraprim.

The new drug has not yet been approved by the FDA and it can only be sold after being prescribed by a doctor. Imprimis is selling a bottle of 100 pills for $99 through its website.

Mark Baum, Imprimis’ CEO, told the AP news agency:

We are looking at all of these cases where the sole-source generic companies are jacking the price way up. There’ll be many more of these.

US Uncut reports that when reaching out to Shkreli for comment, his only response was:

lol.

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