WASHINGTON - Jailed "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli, his former company Vyera Pharmaceuticals and others asked a judge Monday to find that the company broke no laws in its handling of the drug Daraprim, which saw its price increase by more than 4,000% in one day.
The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit in January 2020, alleging that the company that Shkreli once ran protected its dominance of the drug by restricting distribution to ensure generic drug makers could not get the samples needed to bring out a cheaper version of the drug. The company, formerly Turing Pharmaceuticals, also prevented potential competitors from buying an ingredient, the FTC said.
Daraprim, which is used to treat toxoplasmosis, saw its price go from $17.50 per tablet to $750. Toxoplasmosis is a common parasitic infection that rarely causes serious problems, unless the infected person has a weakened immune system.
In a filing on Monday, the defendants said that the FTC had failed to prove that the company hurt competition, since another drug -- Bactrim -- was also an effective treatment for toxoplasmosis. They also argued that other companies had been able to buy the key ingredient, pyrimethamine, contradicting an FTC allegation.
The government also failed to show that the defendants made any ill-gotten gains, they said in the filing.
Shkreli, who is due to be released from prison in October 2022, became notorious as "Pharma Bro" when he sharply raised the price of the anti-parasitic drug Daraprim while chief executive of Turing Pharmaceuticals.
Shkreli had been convicted in August 2017 of cheating investors in two hedge funds he founded, and trying to prop up the stock price of biotechnology company Retrophin Inc, which he once ran.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz)