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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: 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...