L10 Dr. Greig: Why drug discovery need you (unfinished) Flashcards
what was the average cost of a new drug in 2007 vs now
2007: 2115
now: 180,000
what are some stats about cancer drugs
- Cancer drug prices rise by 10% per year in the USA
- 12 new cancer drugs approved in 2012
- 11 cost >$100,000 per year
- Only 3 found to improve patient survival
- 2 increased survival by <2 months
- Cetuximab (lung cancer) 1.2 months of extra life…costs $80,000
–> causes Skin toxicity in 85% of patients! - Bevacizumab (lung cancer) statistically significant increase in survival…but added 12-18 days of extra life
how much should a drug not exceed in price in the UK and how much would a drug actually worsen the healthcare field ?
- if a drug costs for than 30k euros but doesnt give more than one year of life it shouldn’t be approved… but normally does
- any drug that costs more than 15k euros is actually harmful as it takes money away from other essential healthcare services
what is the price of the most expensive drug in the world
what are the three benefits of drug
3.2 Million dollars
BENEFITS:
TIME TO WALK 10 METRES IMPROVED BY 0.42 SECONDS OVER PLACEBO
TIME TO RISE FROM FLOOR IMPROVED BY 0.64 SECONDS OVER PLACEBO
IMPROVEMENT MEASURED ON FUNCTIONAL SCALE OF 0 – 17
DRUG: 2.6; PLACEBO: 1.9
what do we sacrifice for spending all our money in cancer drugs
we sacrifice a lot for spending money on cancer drugs instead:
- kidney translapnts
- fertility treatments
- surgery for obesity
- free dental care
- treatments for drug addicts
etc.
- increased taxes
why are drugs priced so highly? (5)
- this industry has such a high risk of failure
- only 5-10% of drugs that enter clinical trials ever reach the market (takes a lot of money to produce)
- only 1 in 3 drugs that reach the market ever make a profit
- taking into the account the cost of the failures it costs over 2 billion to develop a new drug
- plus cost of marketing
- we need to make back this money somehow
what happens of a company is not sufficiently profitable?
some people think that pharma is not sufficiently profitable and others think otherwise
- Share price slumps
- Management fired
- Company taken over
- Employees fired and assets stripped
what is the value of innovation with the ex of Hepatitis C
we have innovated so much and improved cure rates but our drugs have gotten so much more expensive
ex.
Hepatitis C (over 170 million cases worldwide)
Prior to 2011
* Dual therapy – ribavirin / pegylated interferon-a (caused symptoms of the flu)
* Cost $18 – 36k
* Sustained viral response (cure rate) 40 – 50%
2011
* Incivek fastest ever to reach $1 billion in sales
* Cost $49k + $18 – 36k
* Cure rate 60 – 80%
2014
* Sovaldi / Harvoni
* No need for pegylated interferon-a and additional costs / side effects
* Cure rate >95%
* 12 – 24 weeks rather than 24 – 48 weeks
* A course takes 84 days…how much should each pill cost?
Has pharma achieved miracles?
yes.
cured infectious diseases and childhood cancers and even “neglected tropical diseases”
cured many sports players are perfectly okay now when they were ridden with sickness once upon of time
what would have happened of AIDS wasn’t a global disease
wouldn’t have been treated that rapidly by professionals as frequencies around the world would have been different and it wasnt life threatening even though people were dying so frequently and the life expectancy was 1 year to 21 months to normal
how much difference did it make to have drugs against two different targets?
it made a difference because we can avoid resistance from developing
how are combination pills made against HIV
we can use non-nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors and integrase inhibitors to make an arsenal of drugs against HIV, when combined with already existing treatments for HIV.
we can combine these drugs into a single tablet to improve patient adherence
how can we significantly lower HIV?
- If viral load is kept low by ART, then the risk of transmission can be virtually eliminated
- ex. using anti-retroviral therapy there is near elimination of mother to child transmission
- this means We could eliminate HIV completely within a generation!
- HOWEVER, fewer than half of HIV infected people are receiving treatment, most have not been diagnosed
- An estimated 21 million deaths could be avoided with better testing and better ART coverage
what is the biggest threat to healthcare budgets?
Alzheimer’s disease
- so many tries and so many failed drugs
- so much money spent on curing this horrible disease
biogen developed a drug that may help with alzhiemers…how much should it cost and how much will it cost
it should cost around 2,500 it be cost effective
however, it actually costs 56,000
it could cost medicare 36-66 B dollars
unless informed people shout louder than uniformed people
