Great news menarini beat the majors.
fiercepharma.com/pharma/men....
Unfortunately they broke the all time price gouging record for private supply .
If you want supply in Italy $50k quoted by a very reliable source. (a leading Oncologist here)
It is the optimum standard of care as sciatic nerve Russian roulette with Fulvestrant.
Unconscionable price gouging or free enterprise cost recovery? Compassionate supply is code for pressuring authorities to subsidise supply. No honour amongst thieves?
Is that $50k per month? Price gouging or paying back development costs? Either either. I guess ultimately if insurers will pay for it the pharmaceutical industry thinks the price is just right.
I never fail to be surprised how much drugs in America cost. While we don’t have automatic access to everything nor do we have Right To Try legislation we can afford insulin, for example. My father used it and it cost him $6 per month. Xgeva costs me $30 per injection but without a subsidy it costs $88. I don’t know what it costs in America but I think there’s a lot of questions that could be asked about drug pricing. Who’s going to do that though? Here, it’s the PBS who decide what drug they’ll subsidise and they do negotiate with drug companies without insisting on a really low price. My oncologist says NZ also negotiate hard but they won’t pay the prices Australian authorities are prepared to pay. The thinking is that pharmaceutical companies need some profit to enable continued research but whether they need as much as they seek is a different matter. It’s not out of the question for the PBS to spend $250,000 per patient for the rarer diseases with less options but they also expect patients to use the generic drug when the patent expires.
I recall he said per month and for the elite private market, Gina demographic actually. He also said some trials in the US promising but the trial hospitals require up to $50k deposit for “support” services from non residents. I think we know what that’s about.
2 big Pharma’s failed so just cashing in. In the free market shareholders, executives with KPI bonus’s are the key consideration. Altruism not so much. By that article Astra Zeneca still has one in trial. I watched a zoom presentation with senior representative of FDA, leading oncolgist , a few long term survivors, FDA EU equivalent where even they find the approval process inscrutable. No wonder it’s a huge barrier, obscenely expensive. The other takeaway was it’s unfair, sad the less well off, poor countries don’t have the same access to genomics.
The pharmaceutical industry in US is unethical, exploitative, have politicians in pocket but at times breakthroughs occur.
The new carT cell immunotherapy is up there with the early treatments costing the PBS up to $500k but some spectacular results aproaching cure for leukaemia?
This company lMU (ASX) has some promising clinical trials but hopefully others in the pipeline.
We all know the statistics but I, we refuse to live without hope someday more breakthroughs will occur.
Sometimes something as simple as gut biome can affect immunotherapy response. Healthy gut, healthy immune system, best efficacy.
I’m with you. Just because there’s not a cure today doesn’t mean there’s not one coming. Trials in America for non-residents always cost a lot I’ve seen fund raising campaigns where they are trying to raise a quarter million even half a million dollars. American medicine is about capitalism at the end of the day.
And don’t start me on genome testing. If I’d agreed to go on a trial at the Mater I could have had the testing gone for free but it had to be sent to America. And cost well over $5k. Why can’t our labs do it for us here? We’re not a backward third world country but sometimes we behave like it. I don’t believe it should cost anything like $5k let alone $7k. At one point the govt said they’d fund testing so those of us with cancer could get more targeted treatment. If that didn’t mean genomic testing what did it mean? 😡
It is an undeniable fact that there are a lot of failures in the field of cancer research and even CAR-T which was touted as the answer to every cancer patient's prayers isn’t any good in solid tumours although there is success in blood cancers but it’s not universal. And then there’s the unexpected secondary cancers in some CAR-T patients. I know there’s a lot of conspiracy theories about that but once it’s properly investigated it might well come to nothing. It’s known that we can get more than one primary cancer and a young friend beat pancreatic cancer only to die a decade or so later of breast and stomach cancer. An older friend was just diagnosed de novo with two different breast cancer subtypes, both TN.
I think there’s more to know about cancer than we know so far. At least breast cancer isn’t rare. Small comfort I know but there’s lots of treatments and lots of work being done.
I am on that med now. I thought my other treatments were expensive this one is astronomical. I would have been dead years ago if I didn't have good insurance.The costs are ridiculous.
Don’t overlook off label drugs and the TAPUR study trial in US, MoST study in Australia. Our new Oncologist advised at least one other but escapes me.
garvan.org.au/research/clin...
Realistically some years away from the clinic but 2 uplifting if exuberant reports. One from US media and a TEDx talk by a researcher from Portland.
youtu.be/LIvVMIcRTew?si=mQ_...
Some holiday reading 😀 have just started Cancer Care by Dr Marik but the forward makes a lot of sense. Hard going for the layperson.
Agree that cost of the life-saving novel cancer therapy is exorbitant. This is typically US issue where the drugs are approved based on the risk-benefit ratio without consideration for cost. Although private insurances typically cover at least part of it, the Medicare is not. This is where manufacture and various grant come into play.
This is the reason I continue working to get covered (minus deductible and max out of pocket).
In the rest of the world, it’s not enough that the health authority approve the drug. Government insurance should agree to pay for it. If this happens, the price is lower than in US and often not being covered at all.
We heard from many BC patients on this forum that they have less choices of the drugs, PET scans are not performed etc.
so pls keep this in mind. It’s not black and white. We’re fortunate to receive the drugs that extending our life’s.
And when we talk about unethical pharma, think about developing treatments for rare disease (cancer included). Not only there will not be any profit, but the cost will never be recovered.
Full disclosure: I work in large pharma monitoring the safety of the drug during development and after approval on a market. And I have MBC.
Yet somehow, pharmaceutical companies make sizable profits. In the US, basic research is funded by the government, but if a successful drug emerges, they don't have to pay it back or anything, and some costs are tax deductible, including advertising.
My take on the pharmaceutical industry is the researchers, scientists and academics are incredibly dedicated and mostly altruistic. Big pharma exploits the government research money , resources and seeks to commercialise, gain FDA ,TGA etc approval.
Some regulatory approval is required to prevent harmful ineffective drugs, devices being released to the market eg thalidomide, mesh device.
Big pharma lobbyists, fete politicians, doctors to promote their products.
We saw recently during covid that the supply mostly comes from China, India raw materials at least. The spike in Insulin revealed cartel, exploitation behaviour.
Biden threatened to reduce patent protection.
They would be much better served by streamlining the FDA approval process, fast tracking yes but retain GRAS , safety, efficacy. If it takes 5+ years for data why not provisional? It can cost $1B to bring to market, unsustainable.
The American health system is a free enterprise basket case, the worst in the world for travellers, the poor. You should never wholly privatise essential services like health. UK, Canada, Australia have public and private health systems with the state providing a safety net system. In Oz a publicly funded insurance system Medicare set up by a progressive government. . America has rampant costs and charity for the poor or uninsured as best I can workout.
America hugely invests in cancer treatments and It’s MD Anderson facility is amongst top hospitals in world. Other countries with public systems have highly rated treatment hospitals, survival rates also. The problem is you can get get essentially the same care in peer countries, eg Finland for next to nothing and not be bankrupted.
Some promising news seekingalpha.com/news/40462...
At this time of year I am thankful for the time I have with loved one’ s that modern, complementary medicine has given me. ( just a carer but statistically probably applies to me one day) 🙏
Faslodex and Xgeva Part II
CT scan revealed I am stable
CBD oil
Shortage of Chemo drugs
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