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New cancer immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors are showing success in treating cancer, but can cost well over $100,000 a year:
Newer cancer drugs that enlist the body's immune system are improving the odds of survival, but competition between them is not reining in prices that can now top $250,000 a year.
The drugs' success for patients is the result of big bets in cancer therapy made by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co, Merck & Co Inc and Roche Holding AG, among others in big pharma. The industry's pipeline of cancer drugs expanded by 63 percent between 2005 and 2015, according to the QuintilesIMS Institute, and a good number are reaching the market.
The global market for cancer immunotherapies alone is expected to grow more than fourfold globally to $75.8 billion by 2022 from $16.9 billion in 2015, according to research firm GlobalData.
[...] "Competition is key to lowering drug prices," Trump told pharmaceutical executives at an Oval Office meeting in January.
But that is not happening with new drugs called checkpoint inhibitors that work by releasing a molecular brake, allowing the immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells the same way it fights infections caused by bacteria or viruses.
For cancers like melanoma, the treatments can mean long-term survival for around 20 percent of patients.
Bristol's Yervoy, first approved in 2011, targets a protein known as CTLA-4. Other immunotherapies, including Bristol's Opdivo, Keytruda from Merck, Roche's Tecentriq, and Pfizer Inc's Bavencio, involve a different protein called PD-1.
Other targets are being explored. Some new data will be presented this week in Washington at the American Association for Cancer Research's annual meeting.
Current checkpoint inhibitors each have a list price near $150,000 a year. A combination of Yervoy and Opdivo, approved by the Food and Drug Administration for advanced or inoperable melanoma, has a cost of $256,000 a year for patients who respond to the treatment.
Similar immunotherapies are in development at companies like AstraZeneca Plc (AZN.L). Merck, which declined to comment on pricing plans, expects an FDA decision by May 10 on its combination of Keytruda and chemotherapy as an initial treatment for the most common form of lung cancer - by far the biggest market for cancer drugs.
Pfizer said Bavencio, cleared by the FDA earlier this month to treat Merkel cell carcinoma, a rare type of skin cancer, has a price "comparable to other checkpoint inhibitors approved for different indications."
(Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday April 04 2017, @12:38PM (11 children)
Agreed. And, I can't help but think to the progress we've seen in computers which went from $multi-million refrigerator-sized behemoths to cell phones at a $few-hundred. Who knows if this is laying the groundwork for what will later become much more affordable medicines. Possibly naive, but one can hope.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Tuesday April 04 2017, @01:23PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @01:58PM (4 children)
It has little to do with R&D costs and everything to do with the nature of the disease. Your life is priceless, and you have no bargaining power. Therefore, the price point will stay at "what you are worth plus whatever we can shake from whoever can't bare the guilt" median. Consequently, price will be lower in poorer countries, and in countries which are predominantly well-prepared, philosophically or religiously, for death (and quite unsurprisingly, the two sets are usually very much overlapping).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday April 04 2017, @02:47PM (3 children)
This. It's "your money or your life" highway robbery, with your ultimately fatal disease as the weapon.
How many people choose to die rather than pay, I wonder? I suspect more than a few choose death, and we don't hear about it because of our squeamishness about death. Many older people who know they are terminal, and whose quality of life is terrible, as in they need help just to relieve themselves, and can't walk, can't use their hands, can't even shift around in their beds, can barely talk, would rather die sooner so their remaining savings go to their children instead of doctors. But at nearly every turn, people are encouraged and even pushed to fight on, browbeaten with religious dogma that suicide is a sin, period, and lead on by doctors partly stuck in and partly complicit with a "fee for service" system that puts profit first, and counts profit by the braindead measure of quantity of care given. From what I hear, the US is one of the nations least accepting of death.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @03:44PM
I guess less than those who don't have the decision to pay simply because they don't have the necessary money.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:55PM
A good friend was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma (a blood cancer that is non-operable). He looked briefly at chemo that was recommended strongly by an oncologist but once he saw the chemo infusion room full of people grimacing in agony he lost interest. Then when he did some research and found that the average time it bought was about 6 months, he refused that treatment all together.
Instead he doubled down on medical marijuana and was pain free for more than a year, he did have some pain the last couple of weeks of his life. He was in very good shape when diagnosed (age about 70) and lived for about 18 months...after the initial diagnosis of 6 months to live without the chemo.
His comment after leaving the oncology office was that he could see the cash register numbers flipping by in the doctor's eyes. (old cash registers had a mechanical digital readout...)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @12:33AM
The cognitive dissonance in you is amazing, maybe it is stockholm syndrome. Assuming the executioner who is torturing you is going to let you go for telling the truth is no different than expecting these treatments are actually going to help you when it is people like that pushing them...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday April 04 2017, @02:24PM (3 children)
An estimated 14 million have cancer in the USA alone. An estimated 12.7 million people across the globe are diagnosed with cancer per year. Thats's instant market demand and plenty of profit opportunity. There weren't 14 million people in dire need of a computer.
Even if it cost them 10 billion to develop they could sell it at $714 to recoup just the research costs from 14 million people. Hell, they could sell it at $5k per year and make a killing in no time.
Either they are price gouging to recoup the costs up front, or perhaps they know the drug wont be as effective in the long run and are trying to milk it before the market declares it a dud and abandons it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Joe on Tuesday April 04 2017, @03:02PM (2 children)
recoup the costs up front
They are recouping the costs of these drugs, their failed drug candidates, providing funding for current and future drug development, and (obviously) extra so they turn a profit.
Typical pharmaceutical economies of scale don't quite work out since these are biological drugs (complicates generic production) that also require medical facilities and personal.
they know the drug wont be as effective in the long run and are trying to milk it before the market declares it a dud and abandons it.
The clinical trial data on immune checkpoint inhibitors disagree. The main problem with their effectiveness is the variability in patient responses (some are cured of late stage, no therapies left cancer while others do not respond at all). The effectiveness of these drugs will improve as we are better able to understand the correlates of a positive response.
- Joe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:11PM (1 child)
They are recouping the costs of these drugs, their failed drug candidates, providing funding for current and future drug development
I have drugs A, B, C, D, and E.
Drugs A and B are complete failures. Drug C is a success, so I build in to the cost of C the cost of A and B. I haven't started work on D and E yet, so I'll build in the cost of those to C as well.
Drug D is a complete failure and drug E is a success, so I build in to the cost of E the cost of A, B, and D. I haven't started work on F and G yet, so I'll build in the cost of those to E as well.
That's a neat trick.
(Score: 2) by Joe on Tuesday April 04 2017, @08:10PM
That's a neat trick.
No, it's part of the reality of modern pharmaceutical development in a for-profit system.
9/10 drugs that start human clinical trials fail and, out of the drugs that make it, 4/10 drugs fail at Phase III (approximate cost to take a drug this far, which takes about ten years, is 1 billion dollars).
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2017/01/23/i-do-hate-to-tell-you-this-but [sciencemag.org]
- Joe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @03:40PM
I think you must have a very large refrigerator. [wikimedia.org] :-)