Genzyme is guilty of abusing a dominant position in the marketplace for its Gaucher disease treatment Cerezyme (imiglucerase for injection) and will have to supply the drug to providers of homecare services for these patients at a discount to the prevailing National Health Service list price for the drug, according to the UK’s Office of Fair Trading.
The ruling, delivered yesterday by the Competition Appeal Tribunal, upheld the OFT’s position that Genzyme had set the price of Cerezyme too high for independent homecare service providers, making it impossible for them to secure a reasonable margin on the drug. This prevented the independents from competing in the open marketplace for the care of Gaucher disease patients and deprived the NHS of choice, it concluded.
Last year, Genzyme was fined £3 million pounds by the Tribunal in the case and was forced to carve $5 million dollars from its 2003 revenues after the OFT’s findings on the Cerezyme margin squeeze were upheld [[17/03/04d]].
In the latest development, The Tribunal has agreed that Genzyme must supply Cerezyme to any bona fide provider of homecare services at a discount of not less than 20 pence per unit (which is 7.2 per cent of the current NHS list price). The OFT had argued that the figure should be at the higher end of the range between 5.3 per cent and 7.7 per cent.
