SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @05:09PM (1 child)
You're speaking to someone who fundamentally disagrees with that viewpoint of capitalism. Many have pointed it out, I'm sure it is a viewpoint he has heard plenty of, but he just can't wrap his brain around the problem.
For you Jmo: the solution isn't about eliminating the idea of capitalism but to limit the wealth that any one person can acquire. Ridiculously high tax rates for incomes over a certain point do a great job and they worked fine some 50+ years ago. No need to go full communist. This fear of "marxist socialism" is pretty hilarious since we already have so many social programs. Stop ignoring the facts: socialized healthcare results in statistically better health while also being more efficient. If you are fiscally conservative then this should really be important to you, otherwise you're A FUCKING HYPOCRITE!
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday April 04 2017, @10:13PM
limit the wealth that any one person can acquire
So what, tell people they have earned too much and to cease and desist from being productive? Any limit you set that would be meaningful would have put Steve Jobs on his ass after the Apple II. So that means no Mac, no Next, no Pixar, no iMac, no iPod, no iPhone and no iPad. The world is better off in that alternate reality? Multiply that loss of GDP by a million and you start to see the beginnings of the impact telling the fraction of a percent of people who can create to stop would have. Seems somebody wrote a book about that, can't for the life of me think who that could have been though.....