Photo Credit: Breonny Lee
BY Taylor Adams Cogan
One person skipped meals to afford his medicine. Another considered selling her house so she could get her prescription filled. One even said he resigned himself to the fact that he would just have to die because he couldn’t get his daily medicine.
But because of the work of Dr. Alex Oshmyansky and his team, these people and others have been able to access drugs without destabilizing their lives.
Oshmyansky could be sitting comfortably, working within America’s healthcare system and accepting the inequitable nature of the field like so many others have for generations. After all, it’s not every person who starts college at age 13.
“I decided, with all the wisdom of a 17-year-old, that I wanted to go to med school to help people directly,” he says.
That illusion quickly dissipated when he saw companies were buying the rights to a generic drug – meaning that one company was the only one making it – and then charging whatever they wanted, dramatically raising the price overnight.
“I got upset about that, and got together with a doctor friend, and we decided to make a nonprofit pharmaceutical company to make and sell the drugs at cost,” he said.
The doctors knew they were on the right path, doing the right thing: getting people the prescriptions they needed at a rate they could actually afford it. Should’ve been easy enough to get going, right?
“For three to four years, we failed spectacularly at getting funding,” he says.
While speaking with a venture capital fund in Silicon Valley, he learned the nonprofit approach might’ve been the issue, which led him to pursue a public benefit corporation – a for-profit corporation that works to have a positive impact on society and the environment.
“They were right. I was able to raise a little over a million dollars coming out of their venture capital program, which sounds like a lot but isn’t in pharmaceuticals,” he says. “It was nice enough to get us started.”
But he wouldn’t get what they truly needed to get affordable medicine into the hands of people who needed it until Oshmyansky typed out one cold email, hitting “send” to none other than the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
Mark Cuban – our local billionaire who got his start by launching broadcast.com in Deep Ellum – chatted with the doctor a bit, liking the idea and investing a “small amount” of money. It wouldn’t take long before Cuban became much more involved. He invested further, and from the very place he started his own business, this operation began constructing a facility. Today, the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company provides critical medicine to people who need it, all from Taylor Street in Deep Ellum.
It’s yet another business that built its foundation in the neighborhood, and it’s certainly not the first to be in the manufacturing business – Deep Ellum has a rich history in that field. But in this case, they needed a sterile environment, because they don’t just cut out the middleman; they produce the drugs themselves.
“That’s what we’re doing down in Deep Ellum. We set up a sterile injectable medication production, making drugs that are in shortage,” he says.
They’ve been ramping up over 2024 and 2025, so they’re getting needed drugs to hospitals across the country.
“I’m thrilled by the impact that we’re having,” he says. “We have a wall of physical letters that people send to us, emails – it sounds abstract, but those drug pricing scams have a very severe impact on people’s lives.”
Take a 30-count supply of 10mg of Escitalopram (a common medicine for anxiety and depression): According to the Cost Plus site, you could get your month’s supply of this essential medication for $6.25 instead of $47.70, money that could instead go to your necessary groceries. Or, for someone who’s going through cancer and may need multiple drugs, just one of those, such as a 30-count of Abiraterone Acetate, could cost $1,093.20 elsewhere – but through Cost Plus, it’s only $23.69. That’s approaching the difference between affording medication and covering some housing costs.
So while you pass that large, quiet building on Taylor Street as you walk to Hall Street, know this is the kind of difference people in that building are achieving. And, who knows, maybe it’s not the first time that spot has had such an impact: When they began excavating the foundation of the building, Oshmyansky says they discovered pharmaceutical vials from the 19th century.
“I like to hope that’s a good omen,” he says.
“[Our business] is very different than the typical stuff in Deep Ellum, I think we add a unique flavor to the community: Forty people work here on-site, they go out to lunch. I like to think we add to the economy here in Deep Ellum.”
Oshmyansky had also previously worried about building a factory so close to other businesses and residents, but the neighborhood welcomed it, he says.
“I was very pleasantly surprised,” he says. “I thought there would be a bit of pushback, but no, the people of Deep Ellum are great.”
