Digoxin

• THE WOODLANDS, Texas, Jan. 08, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Lexicon Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Nasdaq: LXRX), a biopharmaceutical company with a mission of pioneering medicines that transform patients’ lives, today announced a business and pipeline update at the 42nd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference taking place January 8-12, 2024.
• “Lexicon achieved major advancements in 2023 in its business and pipeline of pharmaceutical innovations,” said Lonnel Coats, chief executive officer and director of Lexicon.
• The company will also focus on ensuring a strong ongoing awareness of INPEFA in the medical community through medical publications and congress presence.
• Company to Present at J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Thursday, January 11, 2024 at 10:30am PST (1:30pm ET)
  Lonnel Coats, Lexicon’s chief executive officer, will make a company presentation.

• Past public ire over high drug prices has recently taken a back seat to a more insidious problem – no drugs at any price.
• Patients and their providers increasingly face limited or nonexistent supplies of drugs, many of which treat essential conditions such as cancer, heart disease and bacterial infections.
• The American Society of Health System Pharmacists now lists over 300 active shortages, primarily of decades-old generic drugs no longer protected by patents.

A generic problem

• The problem boils down to the nature of the pharmaceutical industry and how differently the markets for brand and generic drugs operate.
• Perhaps the clearest indication of this is the fact that prices of brand drugs in the U.S. are among the highest in the developed world, while generic drug prices are among the lowest.
• But once the patent expires, the drug becomes generic and any company is allowed to manufacture it.

Outsourced production creates more supply risks

• One of the consequences of generics’ meager margins is that drug companies outsource production to lower-cost countries.
• While overseas manufacturers often enjoy significant cost advantages over U.S. facilities, such as easy access to raw materials and lower labor costs, outsourcing production at such a scale raises a slew of issues that can hurt the supply.
• The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the country’s reliance on foreign suppliers – and the risks this poses to U.S. consumers.
• To ensure domestic supplies, the Indian government restricted the export of medications, disrupting the global supply chain.

Low profits hurt quality

• Manufacturing drugs to consistently high quality standards requires constant testing and evaluation.
• A company that sells a new, expensive, branded drug has a strong profit motive to keep quality and production high.
• That’s often not the case for generic drug manufacturers, and this can result in shortages.
• Thus, any hiccup in production or shutdown due to quality issues can affect the entire market.

Repatriating the drug supply

• It is hard to quantify the impact of drug shortages on population health.
• However, a recent survey of U.S. hospitals, pharmacists and other health care providers found that drug shortages led to increased medication errors, delayed administration of lifesaving therapies, inferior outcomes and patient deaths.
• Whether this approach is feasible on a broader scale is uncertain, but, in my view, it’s a good first attempt to repatriate America’s drug supply.

• With todays announcement, we look forward to working with our partner Neopharm to launch ORLADEYO in Israel.
• The approval of ORLADEYO is a major advancement for the HAE community in Israel.
• The most frequently reported adverse reactions in patients receiving ORLADEYO compared with placebo were back pain and gastrointestinal reactions.
• The gastrointestinal reactions generally occurred early after initiation of treatment with ORLADEYO, became less frequent with time and typically self-resolved.

• Every HAE patient has a unique experience with their therapy, and these data demonstrate that ORLADEYO can be a very effective treatment option for patients regardless of their reported prior attack rates or prophylactic therapy history.
• Regardless of prior prophylaxis, a rapid reduction in median attack rates was observed early (1.67 attacks/month at baseline to a median attack rate of 0.33 attacks/month in days 1-90).
• Upon initiating ORLADEYO treatment, the reduction in median attack rates from baseline over the 1360 days period was consistent for patients regardless of their prior prophylaxis therapy.
• Regardless of baseline attack rate, patients reported a reduction in attack rates when treated with ORLADEYO.