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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 jmorris on Tuesday April 04 2017, @08:56PM (1 child)
You are saying some really nasty things about yourself and your world view. So you believe, and project upon everyone else, that they are so desperate to live another year they would spend the inheritance of their children, perhaps even sell their children themselves? in a pointless effort to buy a product that didn't even exist a year ago and might not even work. Humm. Ok. And I'm the selfish uncaring bastard here. All righty then!
If a product is going to be a success it has to eventually be affordable by enough people to maximize profit. Why is this a difficult concept?
And it is cheap virtue signaling to say you are for lower returns for pharma stocks but if you had a brain you would understand the problem with that is that if pharma stocks consistently have substandard returns investors will put their money elsewhere and there won't BE pharma stocks anymore. And if they return "too much" consistently it is called a "bubble" and self corrects after a crash. The market works. It works far better than your socialism in providing plenty for all. Capitalism and the market have worked every time they have been allowed to exist and socialism has failed every time it has been tried. Some people aren't swayed by evidence, it is a religious question for them and apparently you are one of those people.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday April 04 2017, @10:40PM
You mean evidence like this [who.int], showing that many countries with socialist government-run health care systems get substantially better patient outcomes at about half the cost? Or for that matter, the evidence from numerous sources that those socialists in Cuba get approximately the same patient outcomes as the US for 1/20th of the cost that the US pays?
I don't think it's me who is ignoring evidence here.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.