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| Turing Pharmaceuticals CEO Martin Shkreli |
Martin Shkreli's controversial Turing Pharmaceuticals made global headlines this week after the startup chose to jack up the price of a decades-old drug to boost revenue, and the company's unapologetic CEO took on all critics in media traditional and new. Here's a timeline of how it all went down.
Sept. 20: Why would Martin Shkreli hike an old drug price by 5000%? Only a 'moron' would ask
Back when Martin Shkreli was CEO of Retrophin, he managed to grab a few headlines by buying an old rare-disease drug, Thiola, and raising the price 2000%. Now that he's on to his next company, Turing Pharmaceuticals, he's done himself one better, by buying another old drug and boosting the price 5000%. Read more >>
Sept. 21: Thanks, Turing. Your 5000% price hike puts pharma in the election hot seat
The spotlight on rising drug prices just keeps getting brighter: Lawmakers filing bills and holding hearings, presidential candidates devising anti-price-hike plans, doctors campaigning on social media, think tanks devising cost-benefit measures. The controversies are doing pharma no favors with consumers, either; most Americans blame drugmakers for their own rising pharmacy bills. The last thing pharma needs right now is a scandalous price hike to turn up the heat even further. Read more >>
Sept. 22: Should Martin Shkreli be allowed to play the Good Samaritan defense?
In a moment of candor no doubt brought on by some personal animosity, Martin Shkreli let down his guard on Sunday and told me exactly why he hiked the price of a 62-year-old drug by more than 5000%. "It's a great business decision that also benefits all of our stakeholders," Shkreli told me on Twitter. "I don't expect the likes of you to process that." He then called me a moron, and later bragged about flipping off the media. So there you have it. The unvarnished truth. It was a business decision. It was about money. And screw you. Read more >>
FierceBiotech Radio on Turing Pharma, Martin Shkreli and the magic of Twitter
FierceBiotech's John Carroll discusses his personal experience with the ongoing fallout over Turing Pharmaceuticals' drug pricing and CEO Martin Shkreli's public response. Listen online >>
Sept. 23: The Shkreli scandal leaves a big mess for biotech to clean up
It turns out that being called a moron by Martin Shkreli at the beginning of a week such as this is like being mocked by the villain in a James Bond movie. The audience will love you for it. Shkreli handed me my 15 minutes of fame on Sunday, in a retort tied to his defiant remark about hiking the price of a drug used by AIDS patients by more than 5000%. No doubt he thought it was withering. But it simply helped define him as an immature jerk in a global, online backlash of biblical proportions. Read more >>
Turing Pharma price hike debacle tars entire pharma industry's reputation
How much damage can one person do? In the case of the pharma industry this week, the answer was quite a lot. That one person was Martin Shkreli, the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, who hiked the price of its newly purchased toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim by more than 5000%. Universal social media criticism and outrage over "price gouging" followed, along with a financial hit to biotech stocks. Then late Tuesday, Shkreli took it back--at least partly. He told ABC News, "We've agreed to lower the price on Daraprim to a point that is more affordable and is able to allow the company to make a profit, but a very small profit." Read more >>
BIO boots Martin Shkreli's Turing out after pricing controversy erupts
Martin Shkreli and his biotech, Turing Pharmaceuticals, are out at BIO. FierceBiotech learned today that the BIO board opted to kick him out of the industry organization after an intense controversy erupted over Shkreli's move to boost the price of Daraprim by more than 5000%. Read more >>
Sept. 25: FierceBiotech's John Carroll joins Martin Shkreli, Luke Timmerman, and MedCity News' Meghana Keshavan and Chris Seper to discuss Turing Pharmaceuticals' big week.