SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
"The average cost of cancer drugs today is four times the median household income."(Photo: TheNextSystem)
A Nobel Prize-Winning Cancer Therapy Will Be Unaffordable for Most Americans. Public Pharmaceuticals Can Help Change That.
If biologics really are the future of medicine, we must change the way prescription drugs are priced in the United States, or millions of patients will be left behind
Oct 09, 2018
Last week, researchers James Allison and Tasuku Honjo were awarded this year's Nobel Prize in medicine for their work on cancer immunotherapies, heralded by the Nobel committee as "seminal discoveries" that "constitute a landmark in our fight against cancer."
Immunotherapies like those developed on the basis of Allison and Honjo's work are indeed an important step towards a whole new way to treat cancer, as well as a host of other chronic diseases. However, this Nobel award should remind us that these innovative therapies are out of reach for so many patients in the United States due to the exorbitant prices drug companies charge for them.
Just weeks before the Nobel announcement, oncologist Ezekiel Emmanuel wrote in a Wall Street Journal essay, "We Can't Afford the Drugs That Could Cure Cancer," that "a cure for cancer has become possible, even probable" with immunotherapies, but that our health system cannot afford their price tag. Just after the Nobel announcement, Vox reporter Julia Belluz reminded us that "the average cost of cancer drugs today is four times the median household income" (emphasis added).
Immunotherapies constitute a part of the class of drugs called biologics (as opposed to chemical pharmaceuticals) that have shown very promising results in treating many previously intractable conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, asthma, chronic pain, and Crohn's disease, due to their ability to more precisely target individual diseased cells. Therefore it's no surprise that currently most of the top 10 best-selling drugs worldwide are biologics.
Though the public has helped pay to develop every single new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in recent years--including several immunotherapies for cancer and other diseases--we pay again, and pay dearly, when we want to access such treatments.
Though the public has helped pay to develop every single new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in recent years--including several immunotherapies for cancer and other diseases--we pay again, and pay dearly, when we want to access such treatments. As we have written before, one way around this sort of double taxation would be to invest in the creation of public pharmaceutical companies that could produce and distribute medications at cost, or even below cost when deemed a public health necessity.
Cuba has, perhaps, the most developed public pharmaceutical sector in the world and is actually known for its achievements in biologics. With its success at vaccine development and production, and the development of drugs to treat chronic kidney disease, reduce the risk of diabetes-related amputations and treat HIV/AIDS, Cuba's biopharmaceutical industry is booming.
Cuba nationalized the pharmaceutical sector in 1960 and consolidated a number of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies under the auspices of the Ministry of Health (later transferred to function under the Ministry of Basic Industry). In the 1980s, Cuba began to develop its biotechnology capacity, investing $1 billion into that sector between 1990 and 1996 alone. By 2013, the Cuban biotechnology industry held around 1,200 international patents and was marketing pharmaceutical products and vaccines in more than 50 countries.
Among the pharmaceutical innovations to come out of this fully public pharmaceutical system is the lung cancer immunotherapy vaccine CimaVax. It garnered worldwide acclaim as the first vaccine for an illness the World Health Organization says was responsible in 2016 for an estimated 1.7 million deaths globally. CimaVax is so promising that clinical trials are being run in the US, UK, Canada, Japan and some European countries. Moreover, a four-shot dose of CimaVax is reported to cost Cuba only "up to $100."
The US and Cuba have even formed a joint biotech venture, the Innovative Immunotherapy Alliance, providing the US's Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center access to CimaVax and other cancer therapies. Roswell Park is already running clinical studies with CimaVax in order to obtain FDA approval for the medication's use in the US, and the joint venture plans to develop the other cancer drugs currently in the pipeline in order to gain FDA approval to market those in the US as well.
At the same time, though, President Trump's recent renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement has extended patent protection on biologics in the region to 10 years. Biologics already enjoy 12 years of market exclusivity in the United States, but the 10-year patent protections now applicable to Canada and Mexico is much longer than previous terms, unnecessarily adding costs to the health systems of those countries and restricting patient access to these lines of treatment.
Furthermore, the extension of patent protections on biologics may drive up prices on those medications both at home and abroad by restricting the market for biosimilars (essentially, generics for biologics), according to Peter Maybarduk, the Director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines Program.
If biologics really are the future of medicine, we must change the way prescription drugs are priced in the United States, or millions of patients will be left behind. One way to do that is to invest in public pharmaceuticals that can assure an adequate supply of and equitable access to essential medications.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Dana Brown
Dana Brown is co-director of theory, research, and policy at The Democracy Collaborative and is director of The Next System Project at the Collaborative.
Last week, researchers James Allison and Tasuku Honjo were awarded this year's Nobel Prize in medicine for their work on cancer immunotherapies, heralded by the Nobel committee as "seminal discoveries" that "constitute a landmark in our fight against cancer."
Immunotherapies like those developed on the basis of Allison and Honjo's work are indeed an important step towards a whole new way to treat cancer, as well as a host of other chronic diseases. However, this Nobel award should remind us that these innovative therapies are out of reach for so many patients in the United States due to the exorbitant prices drug companies charge for them.
Just weeks before the Nobel announcement, oncologist Ezekiel Emmanuel wrote in a Wall Street Journal essay, "We Can't Afford the Drugs That Could Cure Cancer," that "a cure for cancer has become possible, even probable" with immunotherapies, but that our health system cannot afford their price tag. Just after the Nobel announcement, Vox reporter Julia Belluz reminded us that "the average cost of cancer drugs today is four times the median household income" (emphasis added).
Immunotherapies constitute a part of the class of drugs called biologics (as opposed to chemical pharmaceuticals) that have shown very promising results in treating many previously intractable conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, asthma, chronic pain, and Crohn's disease, due to their ability to more precisely target individual diseased cells. Therefore it's no surprise that currently most of the top 10 best-selling drugs worldwide are biologics.
Though the public has helped pay to develop every single new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in recent years--including several immunotherapies for cancer and other diseases--we pay again, and pay dearly, when we want to access such treatments.
Though the public has helped pay to develop every single new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in recent years--including several immunotherapies for cancer and other diseases--we pay again, and pay dearly, when we want to access such treatments. As we have written before, one way around this sort of double taxation would be to invest in the creation of public pharmaceutical companies that could produce and distribute medications at cost, or even below cost when deemed a public health necessity.
Cuba has, perhaps, the most developed public pharmaceutical sector in the world and is actually known for its achievements in biologics. With its success at vaccine development and production, and the development of drugs to treat chronic kidney disease, reduce the risk of diabetes-related amputations and treat HIV/AIDS, Cuba's biopharmaceutical industry is booming.
Cuba nationalized the pharmaceutical sector in 1960 and consolidated a number of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies under the auspices of the Ministry of Health (later transferred to function under the Ministry of Basic Industry). In the 1980s, Cuba began to develop its biotechnology capacity, investing $1 billion into that sector between 1990 and 1996 alone. By 2013, the Cuban biotechnology industry held around 1,200 international patents and was marketing pharmaceutical products and vaccines in more than 50 countries.
Among the pharmaceutical innovations to come out of this fully public pharmaceutical system is the lung cancer immunotherapy vaccine CimaVax. It garnered worldwide acclaim as the first vaccine for an illness the World Health Organization says was responsible in 2016 for an estimated 1.7 million deaths globally. CimaVax is so promising that clinical trials are being run in the US, UK, Canada, Japan and some European countries. Moreover, a four-shot dose of CimaVax is reported to cost Cuba only "up to $100."
The US and Cuba have even formed a joint biotech venture, the Innovative Immunotherapy Alliance, providing the US's Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center access to CimaVax and other cancer therapies. Roswell Park is already running clinical studies with CimaVax in order to obtain FDA approval for the medication's use in the US, and the joint venture plans to develop the other cancer drugs currently in the pipeline in order to gain FDA approval to market those in the US as well.
At the same time, though, President Trump's recent renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement has extended patent protection on biologics in the region to 10 years. Biologics already enjoy 12 years of market exclusivity in the United States, but the 10-year patent protections now applicable to Canada and Mexico is much longer than previous terms, unnecessarily adding costs to the health systems of those countries and restricting patient access to these lines of treatment.
Furthermore, the extension of patent protections on biologics may drive up prices on those medications both at home and abroad by restricting the market for biosimilars (essentially, generics for biologics), according to Peter Maybarduk, the Director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines Program.
If biologics really are the future of medicine, we must change the way prescription drugs are priced in the United States, or millions of patients will be left behind. One way to do that is to invest in public pharmaceuticals that can assure an adequate supply of and equitable access to essential medications.
Dana Brown
Dana Brown is co-director of theory, research, and policy at The Democracy Collaborative and is director of The Next System Project at the Collaborative.
Last week, researchers James Allison and Tasuku Honjo were awarded this year's Nobel Prize in medicine for their work on cancer immunotherapies, heralded by the Nobel committee as "seminal discoveries" that "constitute a landmark in our fight against cancer."
Immunotherapies like those developed on the basis of Allison and Honjo's work are indeed an important step towards a whole new way to treat cancer, as well as a host of other chronic diseases. However, this Nobel award should remind us that these innovative therapies are out of reach for so many patients in the United States due to the exorbitant prices drug companies charge for them.
Just weeks before the Nobel announcement, oncologist Ezekiel Emmanuel wrote in a Wall Street Journal essay, "We Can't Afford the Drugs That Could Cure Cancer," that "a cure for cancer has become possible, even probable" with immunotherapies, but that our health system cannot afford their price tag. Just after the Nobel announcement, Vox reporter Julia Belluz reminded us that "the average cost of cancer drugs today is four times the median household income" (emphasis added).
Immunotherapies constitute a part of the class of drugs called biologics (as opposed to chemical pharmaceuticals) that have shown very promising results in treating many previously intractable conditions, such as multiple sclerosis, asthma, chronic pain, and Crohn's disease, due to their ability to more precisely target individual diseased cells. Therefore it's no surprise that currently most of the top 10 best-selling drugs worldwide are biologics.
Though the public has helped pay to develop every single new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in recent years--including several immunotherapies for cancer and other diseases--we pay again, and pay dearly, when we want to access such treatments.
Though the public has helped pay to develop every single new drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration in recent years--including several immunotherapies for cancer and other diseases--we pay again, and pay dearly, when we want to access such treatments. As we have written before, one way around this sort of double taxation would be to invest in the creation of public pharmaceutical companies that could produce and distribute medications at cost, or even below cost when deemed a public health necessity.
Cuba has, perhaps, the most developed public pharmaceutical sector in the world and is actually known for its achievements in biologics. With its success at vaccine development and production, and the development of drugs to treat chronic kidney disease, reduce the risk of diabetes-related amputations and treat HIV/AIDS, Cuba's biopharmaceutical industry is booming.
Cuba nationalized the pharmaceutical sector in 1960 and consolidated a number of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies under the auspices of the Ministry of Health (later transferred to function under the Ministry of Basic Industry). In the 1980s, Cuba began to develop its biotechnology capacity, investing $1 billion into that sector between 1990 and 1996 alone. By 2013, the Cuban biotechnology industry held around 1,200 international patents and was marketing pharmaceutical products and vaccines in more than 50 countries.
Among the pharmaceutical innovations to come out of this fully public pharmaceutical system is the lung cancer immunotherapy vaccine CimaVax. It garnered worldwide acclaim as the first vaccine for an illness the World Health Organization says was responsible in 2016 for an estimated 1.7 million deaths globally. CimaVax is so promising that clinical trials are being run in the US, UK, Canada, Japan and some European countries. Moreover, a four-shot dose of CimaVax is reported to cost Cuba only "up to $100."
The US and Cuba have even formed a joint biotech venture, the Innovative Immunotherapy Alliance, providing the US's Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center access to CimaVax and other cancer therapies. Roswell Park is already running clinical studies with CimaVax in order to obtain FDA approval for the medication's use in the US, and the joint venture plans to develop the other cancer drugs currently in the pipeline in order to gain FDA approval to market those in the US as well.
At the same time, though, President Trump's recent renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement has extended patent protection on biologics in the region to 10 years. Biologics already enjoy 12 years of market exclusivity in the United States, but the 10-year patent protections now applicable to Canada and Mexico is much longer than previous terms, unnecessarily adding costs to the health systems of those countries and restricting patient access to these lines of treatment.
Furthermore, the extension of patent protections on biologics may drive up prices on those medications both at home and abroad by restricting the market for biosimilars (essentially, generics for biologics), according to Peter Maybarduk, the Director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines Program.
If biologics really are the future of medicine, we must change the way prescription drugs are priced in the United States, or millions of patients will be left behind. One way to do that is to invest in public pharmaceuticals that can assure an adequate supply of and equitable access to essential medications.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.