Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday April 04 2017, @11:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the high-cost-of-living? dept.

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."


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday April 04 2017, @05:36PM (3 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday April 04 2017, @05:36PM (#488720)

    Spoken like someone college educated. Now actually go read Marx's Capital, which is where the ideas you are assuming come from and see if you can spot the fallacy behind his Labor Theory of Value. A hundred million souls scream from the grave for the idea which killed them to finally die itself but it lives on in you. If you spot it, congratulations, you are smarter (or more honest) than your prof, if not then well you at least have lots of company in being WRONG. Go back and reread it until you do see the problem.

    because you can only keep as much as you can personally defend.

    No, that is how much wealth a bear can have. Men form tribes, communities and nation states to mutually defend their wealth. Civilization, you should look into it sometime.

    Capitalism is a human construct designed to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich..

    So explain to us how much wealth Steve Jobs transferred from the poor. How much wealth did Tiger Woods transfer from the poor? For that matter, how much does Exxon transfer from the poor? From where I sit people quite willingly lined up around the block to tell the clerk at the Apple Store to "Shut up and take my money!" Televised golf was transformed into a gusher of money while Tiger Woods was playing at the top of his game and he got his share of the loot. Exxon sells me the ability to fill up a tank and visit a faraway place for a pittance and I'm happy to make the exchange with them, their employees seem happy to accept employment with them and the shareholders haven't found a better place to park their investment.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   0  
       Troll=1, Insightful=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:11PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:11PM (#488772)

    Now actually go read Marx's Capital, which is where the ideas you are assuming come from and see if you can spot the fallacy behind his Labor Theory of Value.

    I have read Marx's Capital, cover to cover. I am pretty sure you, jmorris, have not. Because if you had, you'd know that:
    1. The Labor Theory of Value predates Karl Marx. It's biggest advocate was David Ricardo.
    2. Marx specifically points out some of the flaws of the Labor Theory of Value.
    3. Most of Marx's arguments do not in fact rest on the Labor Theory of Value, since Marx considered it suspect, most notably in failing to take into account the social conditions in which the labor was carried out.
    4. The contradiction you are probably thinking of, that labor-intensive industries do not tend to be the most profitable, is still up for debate. Indeed, volumes 2 and 3 go into great detail about the effects of increasing investment in automation versus increasing investment in labor, and provides explanations for the problem. Marx didn't have much by way of empirical evidence of how heavily automated industries behave: He did the best he could manage with the reports on the textile industry, which was the most automated industry in his day, but even so by modern standards almost everything in the 19th century would be considered labor-intensive today.

    So explain to us how much wealth Steve Jobs transferred from the poor.

    How much wealth did Steve Jobs transfer from the poor? Millions of dollars. Most notably from the people that were forced (by a lack of other economic options) to spend 16 hours a day making iPhones in conditions that had the company installing nets so they wouldn't die if they jumped out of a tall building attempting to commit suicide. Also from the people whose land was poisoned by the mining operations to get the materials for said iPhones. And the miners who got occupational diseases and even died on the job. And that's just the systemic stuff: Jobs also screwed most of the early Apple employees out of a lot of money when they went public (basically, those guys would have gotten no payout at all for their effort had Woz not intervened). And of course he screwed Lisa's mother out of child support. I can keep going if you like: Just because you don't see the transfer happening does not mean it isn't happening.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:15PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:15PM (#488776)

    Oh I wish I could see the look on your face when you find out what's wrong with everything you wrote.

    • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:45PM

      by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:45PM (#488785) Journal

      By the time he realizes what's wrong with it, the look on his face will be screaming blistering and burning...

      --
      I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...