Actelion

Actelion was founded in 1997 by husband and wife team Jean-Paul and Martine Clozel together with three colleagues after F. Hoffmann-La Roche cut their funding for Martine's cardiovascular program. They founded Actelion to work on a drugs for rare diseases and retained the rights to the intellectual property from Roche, including the molecule leading to the development of Tracleer, a drug for treating pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) which became a billion dollar seller.

CoTherix

CoTherix was a biopharmaceutical company located in South San Francisco, California. CoTherix focused on licensing, developing, and commercializing therapeutic products for the treatment of cardiopulmonary and other chronic diseases. The company, formerly known as Exhale Therapeutics, Inc., was founded in February 2000 by Gerard Turino, MD, a past president of the American Thoracic Society, and Jerome Cantor, MD, a pulmonary pathologist.

CoTherix's commercial product was "Ventavis (Iloprost)", an inhaled therapy for pulmonary artery hypertension (PAH). It was approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration in December 2004, two months after the company's initial public offering of 5 million shares of common stock.

Fasudil, Tracleer, Asahi and Actelion

Asahi developed fasudil and entered into a licensing and development agreement with CoTherix in July 2006 to pursue regulatory approval and commercialization in the United States and Europe based on their prior track record in this area. In November 2006, CoTherix and Actelion signed a merger plan, which was subsequently announced publicly; this followed the initiation of negotiations in August 2006. In January 2007, Actelion completed acquisition of all CoTherix stock, and summarily informed Asahi that work on fasudil would be terminated. Now, Actelion had a competitor blockbuster drug on the market, bosentan (Tracleer). Asashi claimed that Actelion's acquisition of CoTherix was directly aimed at removing fasudil as a competitor therapeutic, which it effectively did. Asahi pursued damages against CoTherix and Actelion initially through arbitration of a breach of contract claim, which netted them US$91 million, then in a jury trial, which resulted in an award of US$580 million in compensatory and punitive damages. This case has served as an exemplar of the notion that a company's contractual obligations persist after that company's acquisition.

'Kickbacks' Scandal

Tracleer was one of the main drugs manufactured and sold by Actelion. It has been used to treat excessively high blood pressure that affect arteries in the lungs and heart. In the years of 2014 and 2015, before Johnson & Johnson acquired the pharmaceutical company, Actelion was accused of pushing up the prices of Tracleer. According to a website known as Goodrx, sixty tablets (one month's supply) of this drug are sold for an average of $14,500.

Actelion was able to do this by illegally providing money to Medicare patients in order for them to be able to fulfill their co-payments for the drug Tracleer. Medicare is a healthcare program for adults who are 65 years and older. Most patients have their prescriptions covered by Medicare, but they must still pay a portion of the amount of the prescription, known as a co-payment. By making sure Medicare patients are still paying a certain amount, drug companies are unable to raise their prices to inordinately large amounts.

However, recently large drug companies, such as Actelion have been found to be illegally providing cash assistance to charities that help patients with their co-payments in order to increase the demand for their products. Actelion was able to use the charity organization by the name of Caring Voice Coalition to send money only to those people who were receiving prescriptions of Tracleer. When law enforcement was able to catch onto the illegal activities occurring with this organization with relation to two pharmaceutical companies (Actelion and United Therapeutics), it was banned from partaking in any further Medicare related matters. Actelion raised its drug prices to nearly 30% of the inflation rate.

Actelion was also complicit in referring patients to Caring Voice Coalition. Many unknowing patients who were gathering information about organizations that might cover their medical needs were being sent to CVC. Illegally, furthering the high demand for their drug.

While investigations were taking place, Actelion refused to accept that any criminal activity or misconduct had occurred. It has been forced to pay a $360 million as a settlement to the United States government for the malpractice relating to kickbacks to Medicare patients.

Other Lawsuits

As of October, 2018, it was also caught in two lawsuit by drug buyers who claimed that Actelion was preventing a generic version of Tracleer to be manufactured so that it could stay in charge of the market as the sole supplier of the drug.