Merck’s Anti-Cholesterol Drug Threatens Esperion, Other PCSK9 Inhibitor Makers

As a class of drugs to treat high cholesterol, PCSK9 inhibitors have had trouble gaining tracking in the marketplace. Designed to treat people with high cholesterol who don’t respond to statins, since about 2015 a number of companies have received approval for these drugs but struggled with sales. They include Amgen’s Repatha, Sanofi and Regeneron’s Praluent, Novartis’s Leqvio, and Esperion’s Nexletol and Nexlizet.

One of the issues is price. For example, both Repatha and Praluent’s price tags have run around $14,000 for a year’s supply, although the companies cut costs as low as $5,850 per year. With statins typically running about $50 per month, payers have been reluctant to pay for the drugs, which have been reserved for patients with extremely high, largely untreated cases of inherited diseases that result in high cholesterol.