Generics Dampen Cost Increases in Cancer Care
Posted by Jacob Goldstein
April 15, 2008, 1:28 pm
Yes, the price of treating cancer is rising steadily with the advent of expensive targeted drugs. But that rise has been checked, for now, by the arrival of generic versions of some widely used chemotherapy drugs.
The average annual drug cost per cancer patient was $13,113 as of Jan. 1 of this year, up from $6,490 in 2001, according to a report by Cancer e-search, a shop that analyzes cancer treatment patterns for drug companies.
online.wsj.com
That’s been driven by an increase in the use of targeted therapies, such as Genetech’s popular cancer drug Avastin. But the report also shows that the percentage of cancer patients being treated with off-patent drugs is also increasing.
“The drugs that are going generic are the big drugs that are used in a large percentage of the population,” Al Camacho, the company’s president, told the Health Blog. “It doesn’t totally offset the increase in price for the new targeted therapies, but it does attenuate the increase.”
Taxol, a Bristol-Myers Squibb drug that belongs to a popular class of drugs known as taxanes, went generic in 2000, as targeted therapies were starting to gain in popularity. Others have lost protection in the last several years. Pfizer’s Camptosar lost patent protection earlier this year, and a half dozen or so other important cancer drugs are likely to go generic by 2012, Camacho says.
Over the same time period, though, targeted therapies will also become more widely used, and the steady cost increase will continue. By 2012, the report predicts, the average annual cost of cancer drugs will approach $17,000.
Chart: Cancer e-search
Permalink | Trackback URL: blogs.wsj.com |
