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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 Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 04 2017, @05:22PM (3 children)
I thought you were an agnostic? Stop bringing God into this. Or if you want to, open your Bible to Mt. 25 and read up through verse 46. Paying special attention to verse 46.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday April 04 2017, @05:39PM (2 children)
I am. But a demand as irrational as demanding the productive remain productive while having the fruit of that effort redistributed to the useless (which IS the implied rationale behind the proposal) could only be sustained by some sort of equally irrational authority. So if God didn't command it, why shouldn't I simply tell the useless people making the demand to STFU?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 04 2017, @06:13PM
It's not news that you're a selfish prick.
Why don't you go lobby congress for the right to hunt "the useless"?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:41PM
Define "useless." And tell me why whatever metric of "useful" you're using is the standard for something like this.
Your Moloch is the "false scarcity" paradigm. You've sold your soul to it, had it burned up in its red-hot hands, and now nothing remains but a shell animated by hate. You want to use this twisted conception you have of meritocracy as a screen to hide the reality: poor people and the weak disgust you viscerally and you want them dead.
You don't fool anyone but yourself with that bullshit, J-Mo. Quit the idol worship; all material things are for humankind, not the other way around.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...