There’s a lot of money to be made in pharmaceutical development and approvals; however, there’s another advantage to getting some products approved, even if they may not be as profitable as the firm had hoped. These are for drug products that are eligible for the award of a priority review voucher. The new Commissioner’s National Priority Voucher is the one voucher that cannot be sold. However, Rare Pediatric Disease Priority Review Vouchers, Tropical Disease Priority Review Vouchers, and Material Threat Medical Countermeasure Vouchers are worth their weight in gold.
According to Dickensen’s FDA Webview (here, subscription required), “Jazz Pharmaceuticals announced it has sold its FDA Priority Review Voucher (PRV) for $200 million to an undisclosed purchaser. The transaction was disclosed during Jazz’s presentation at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco.” The purchase price of this latest voucher, while not as high as the one sold by United Therapeutics to AbbVie for $350 million in 2015, is still substantial. Per a May 12, 2025 BioPharma Dive article by Ben Fidler (here), Abeona sold its priority review voucher for $155 million and, “[s]ince November, Zevra Therapeutics, Acadia Pharmaceuticals, and PTC Therapeutics all sold vouchers for $150 million, while Ipsen got slightly more, at $158 million, in a deal last August.”
The vouchers can be used for a six-month priority review of another NDA or BLA product by the holder of the voucher, whether it is the original awardee or whoever purchased the voucher from the awardee. If the purchaser of the voucher believes that its product can be a real blockbuster (e.g., $500 million a year), it may be well worth the voucher’s price to get the product to market quickly.
Firms that sell vouchers for big money can use that cash for whatever they want. There is no cost of goods sold associated with the sale of a voucher; thus, it is pure profit for a seller.
