A British baby’s death this year after getting Novartis’s gene therapy Zolgensma was not caused by a toxic drug reaction, the Swiss drugmaker said, allaying concerns over the $2.1 million-per-patient treatment’s risks.
Novartis also said on Thursday that babies with muscle-wasting spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) treated before symptoms emerge were meeting normal development milestones. Novartis has been investigating the death of a six-month-old patient in a European trial. Novartis says investigators and the coroner concluded the immediate cause was brain damage from oxygen deprivation after respiratory distress, not brain damage from a toxic drug agent.
Zolgensma is the world’s most expensive one-time medical treatment.
