Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drugs enters rare disease market — SkimNews
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Mark Cuban / Cost Plus Drugs, which has spent five years cutting generic drug prices, is now testing a move into custom-made rare disease medicines, with the first shipments arriving at its Dallas factory earlier this year.
- The first shipment contained DNA-like molecules crafted by California chemists to patch a rare genetic mutation destroying a single patient's neurons, according to the report.
- A second shipment carried DNA-like molecules developed with Dutch researchers aimed at a rare disease that causes adults to progressively lose muscle control.
- Cuban framed the rare-disease pivot as humanitarian, writing in an email: "It was an obvious chance for us to help those in that unfortunate situation."
- Cost Plus Drugs is positioning the custom-medicine effort as a challenge to the traditional business model for individually manufactured rare-disease therapeutics.
Why it matters: Cost Plus Drugs built its reputation undercutting generic drug prices at scale; entering custom-made rare-disease therapeutics — where each treatment is crafted for a single patient — signals a fundamentally different business model targeting a tiny patient pool but offering life-saving potential. Cuban explicitly cast the move as helping patients who have few other options.
Ask SkimNews
