World Most Expensive Drug Worth One Million Dollars

The most expensive drug in history alipogene tiparvovec, is a money loser that’s not reaching patients. In fact, it’s said to have been paid for and used commercially once since its approval in 2012.

Alipogene Tiparvovec, also known as Glybera, is a medicine proclaimed as the “first gene therapy” in the Western world.

Its approval helped ignite an explosion of investment and excitement around treatments that correct DNA related problems.

A physician from Berlin, Elisabeth Steinhagen-Thiessen, related that she wanted to give a patient the Glybera last fall, and it wasn't so easy. She added that she had to prepare a submission as thick as “a thesis” for German regulators and then personally call one of Germany’s large sickness funds, or insurers, the CEO of DAK, to ask him to pay the $1 million price tag.

Last September, " I gave 40 injections to the muscles of a 43-year-old woman with an ultra-rare disease called lipoprotein lipase deficiency. Such patients don’t process fat correctly. “You draw blood and you are astonished, there is no red blood, it's just cream,” ----Steinhagen-Thiessen says.

One symptom is debilitating abdominal pain. Her patient had been hospitalized more than 40 times.

A single dose of Glybera which contains trillions of viruses harboring correct copies of the lipoprotein lipase gene was administered to the woman and Steinhagen-Thiessen says the treatment was a success. The woman hasn’t been back to the emergency room since the treatment.