Kolassa isn’t so sure. He opens the door to his office, where the decor includes a poster for a gig on Beale Street in Memphis and a photograph of him at the 2007 launch of Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s Soliris. It was one of the early ultra-orphan drugs, which treat diseases affecting fewer than 1 in 50,000 people, in this case obscure blood disorders. The initial list price: $389,000 a year. “I’m speechless right now,” one analyst said on a conference call when that number was revealed.
What happened with Soliris? Kolassa notes that insurers paid up. In 2015, the drug generated $2.6 billion in sales.
The modern drug-development era was beginning when he started in the business 35 years ago, at Upjohn Co. in his native Michigan. There were advances in biotechnology and genomic science, creating miracles. HIV is no longer a death sentence, nor are some cancers, but they’re not cheap to fight.
Hot Topic
Kolassa helped launch one of the first first super high-priced drugs a year after he went to work at Sandoz, now part of Novartis AG, in 1988. The antipsychotic Clozaril retailed for nearly $9,000 a year; previous treatments went for hundreds. Patients and their families protested, and there were lawsuits.
Sandoz ultimately cut the cost. But Kolassa says $9,000 was worth it. “There were people that were literally locked away in rubber rooms for 20 years that were put on this drug, and six weeks later they were out living in group homes.”
Kolassa, who earned a Ph.D. in pharmaceutical marketing at the University of Mississippi in Oxford in 1995, was a professor at Ole Miss before founding MME with former students. Two partners join him for an interview at the office near Oxford Square, one in the conference room and the other, Douglas Paul, participating via speakerphone. Paul interrupts several times to ask reporters about their motivations. He’s worried, Kolassa explains later, because the drug-price topic is just too hot. “It’s on the news constantly, Bill Maher talks about it, it’s a massive campaign issue.”
Kolassa’s getaway from it all, of course, is the blues. When he was a kid, he figured he’d grow up to be a musician. In Germany with the Army in the 70s, he led a band called Uncle Bud’s Pet Squid. It didn’t take long for him to realize that was no way to make a living.
Now he’s able to give strumming his Gibson Bluesmaster equal time. His second album, “Ghosts of the Riverside Hotel,” came out last year. Songs include “Whiskey Woman,” “Mama’s Got a Mojo” and “Grapes & Greens,” with proceeds from sales going to the Blues Foundation. And the prices? Pretty reasonable. Just 99 cents per tune on Amazon.