Curium has set the list price for Bexlutry, its radiosimilar to Novartis’s Lutathera, at $63,524 per infusion, about a 5 percent discount to the cost of the brand drug. Bexlutry was cleared by the FDA on September 14 for adults with somatostatin receptor-positive gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumors, the first U.S. alternative to Lutathera, which the agency approved in January 2018. A standard course is four infusions.
The thin discount reflects radiopharmaceutical economics. Unlike a pill generic, a lutetium-177 dose is manufactured to order and flown to the hospital on a tight schedule, so the copy cannot undercut the brand the way small-molecule generics do. The FDA cleared Bexlutry through the 505(b)(2) pathway based on published evidence and bridging data, not a head-to-head trial against Lutathera.
Competition is already arriving from a second direction. Lantheus’s BRAVNETSA was approved as the first product determined bioequivalent and therapeutically equivalent to Lutathera, and Curium itself is acquiring Lantheus for a reported $8 billion, with a shareholder vote reported for October 14. For Novartis, the price pressure lands on the mature half of its radioligand franchise, alongside the faster-growing Pluvicto prostate cancer drug.