Merck joins the Trump MFN gang with IVF deal

Merck KGaA has become the third pharma company to reach an agreement with the Trump administration to cut the cost of some of its medicines in return for a reprieve from US tariffs on pharma imports.

According to the White House, the German group's US unit EMD Serono will provide fertility drugs used in in vitro fertilisation (IVF) procedures at a 73% discount to the current list price. The drugs will also be made available to cash purchasers via the TrumpRx direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales channel, which is expected to launch in January.

The most favoured nation (MFN) pricing deal comes after similar agreements were signed with Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and like those, it includes a commitment to invest in future biopharma manufacturing and research capacity in the US, without going into further details.

Merck chief executive Belén Garijo said the company already has a strong presence in the US and will be "growing our footprint here even further with future fertility manufacturing."

The agreement covers three approved products – Gonal-f (follitropin alfa), Ovidrel (choriogonadotropin alfa) and Cetrotide (cetrorelix acetate) – which are a standard regimen for IVF and can account for almost 20% of total costs. When all three are used, patients will get an 84% reduction on their list prices, according to the company.

In addition, the deal means that EMD Serono's new fertility drug Pergoveris will be among the first products to go through the FDA's just-launched Commissioner's national priority voucher (CNPV) programme, which will slash the review time for medicines from 10-12 months to one to two months.

Pergoveris, which is already approved in Europe, is a lower-cost alternative to medications already on the US market, said the White House, which has estimated that the reductions will reduce the cost of medicines for each cycle of IVF by around $2,200 from a current level of more than $5,000.

Overall, IVF typically costs between $15,000 and $20,000 per cycle, according to HHS estimates, and around 275,000 cycles are performed annually, with 1.9% of all births relying on IVF.

A fact sheet on the deal also says that EMD Serono will "offer other medicines at a deep discount when selling directly to American patients, guarantee MFN prices on all new innovative medicines that come to market, repatriate increased foreign revenue on existing products, and provide every state Medicaid programme in the country access to MFN drug prices."