High price for Fuzeon

Executive Summary

Roche is making HIV agent Fuzeon (T-20) available in Europe under a pre-license sales program for a price of approximately $50 per day. If that price is a benchmark for the U.S. launch price, it would significantly exceed the cost of other HIV therapies. Roche says the premium price is necessary because "Fuzeon is one of the most complex and challenging molecules ever chemically manufactured by the pharmaceutical industry at large scale, requiring 45 kg of raw materials for 1 kg of Fuzeon, and more than 100 production steps"...