Mark Cuban wants to crack open the market for rare disease treatments

Bulletin. STAT News reports that Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs has set its sights on the market for rare disease treatments, including custom n-of-1 gene therapies. The outlet, publishing October 21, states the company believes it can reduce manufacturing costs for these highly individualized medicines.

N-of-1 therapies are treatments designed for a single patient, often a child with an ultra-rare genetic mutation with no other sufferers on record. Such therapies currently carry extraordinary price tags, in part because each one requires its own bespoke manufacturing process, regulatory navigation, and small-batch production run, with none of the economies of scale that bring down costs for mass-market drugs.

Cost Plus Drugs, the company Cuban founded to sell generic medications at prices tied transparently to manufacturing cost plus a fixed markup, is reportedly extending that model into this far more complex territory. The STAT News report frames this as an attempt to apply cost-reduction methods, previously demonstrated on generics, to a corner of the pharmaceutical market where price has been driven largely by the absence of competition and the sheer logistical difficulty of producing a treatment for one person.

The report does not specify which therapies or manufacturing techniques are involved, nor does it offer pricing figures or a timeline for when such reductions might reach patients. STAT News is the sole source cited for these developments.