the drug, has not officially announced what it will cost in low- and middle-income countries, but it is expected to be much lower. Some aid groups have indicated that ViiV will offer the drug at $250 per year.
“The problem is that actually that won’t be really affordable for countries who need to roll it out and scale up,” said Jessica Burry, a pharmacist with humanitarian group Doctors without Borders.
PrEP pills cost about $54 per year, Warren said.
“The hope is that early in 2023, we can see a price point that is much closer to that 54 [dollars] than to the 250 [dollars],” he said. “Hopefully, in the $100 range per year.”
ViiV said it is working with the U.N.-backed Medicines Patent Pool to allow generic manufacturers to produce cabotegravir at a lower price for low- and middle-income countries.
ViiV said cabotegravir is more complicated to manufacture than most HIV drugs. No generic manufacturers have been selected yet. Once they are, it will take about three to five years before a generic version is on the market.
The company has filed for regulatory approval in 11 countries so far. Burry says there should be more.
“If they’re going to be the only supplier for the next four or five years until generics are available, then they really need to step up to the plate and actually file, register and get that drug available,” she said.
Demand for the drug is unclear. PrEP pills have been slow to catch on.
About 845,000 people in more than 50 countries took them in 2020, but the United Nations was aiming for 3 million by that time.
“We don’t have a ton of PrEP users, so if you’re ViiV, you’re looking at a very small market,” Warren said.
Warren said providers and advocates need to help grow that market. They need to do a better job connecting people at risk with programs that offer PrEP, he added.
“Some of the early PrEP programs began with us thinking that if you just bought the product, people would magically show up,” he said.
Warren hopes to change that as part of a coalition that includes ViiV, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization and others.
“There’s a huge effort in this coalition to bring in civil society from day one, and the communities that this product is meant to help and support,” he said.
The slow uptake means PrEP has not yet shown that it can make much of a real-world impact, Warren noted. He hopes to see research programs launch next year to find the best ways to reach the communities most at risk and lower infection rates.
“If we can’t show that in the next three years, then we don’t necessarily need all these generic manufacturers, because there will not be a market for this product,” he said.
Source: Voice of America