The Food and Drug Administration approved Merck’s drug to treat a rare cardiovascular disorder called pulmonary arterial hypertension on Tuesday, making available a new class of treatment for a deadly condition that’s long been challenging to treat.
Merck will sell the drug, called sotatercept, under the brand name Winrevair. It will be priced at $14,000 per vial, which is injected every three weeks.
In a large trial published last year, the treatment exceeded expectations in significantly increasing the distance that patients could walk and cutting the risk that their condition would worsen, that they would die, and that they would need new treatments.
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