John's SCOREBOARD --
(a) Lucentis does WELL in RVO trials
Message 25993065
(b) Medicare REDUCES payments for Avastin used for DME
to $7.20 per injection.
Lucentis (ranibizumab) = $2,000 an injection
Avastin (bevacizumab) = $50 an injection
Avastin medicare payment reduced to $7.20
Lucentis:
-----------------
Ranibizumab has a 5- to 20-fold higher
binding affinity than bevacizumab
ranibizumab has greater biological activity on day 0 than bevacizumab
For a dose of Lucentis, Medicare reimburses doctors $2,039. Doctors pay just under $2,000 for a dose of Lucentis, Rosenfeld said.
Message 25995781
Both Lucentis and Avastin were developed by Genentech, now owned by Roche. U.S. sales of Lucentis were over $550 million in the first half of this year, Roche reported. Because the drug is primarily used by the elderly, much of that is paid for by Medicare.
== $1.2 BILLION if annualized
Message 25995781
Avastin:
-----------------
bevacizumab has a longer half-life than ranibizumab
Avastin Study Patients Develop Congestive Heart Failure, Enrollment Suspended
Message 25995805
the specialty pharmacy chain The Apothecary Shops
repackages Avastin for use in the eye and sells it to doctors for $27 per dose, John Musil, the company’s CEO, told the Health Blog.
Message 25995781
VEGF Trap-Eye (Regeneron and Bayer),
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may convey even greater affinity and result in 450 times the amount of biological activity at the end of 1 month than either bevacizumab or ranibizumab.
Message 25995760
Message 25995791
INDIA
-------
Estimates suggest that
79.4 million Indians will be affected by diabetes by 2030, of which approximately 20% could lose their vision
Furthermore, a diabetic is 25% more likely to go blind than a non-diabetic.
Given these numbers, the potential for diabetic retinopathy -- a disease affecting the blood vessels of retina thereby causing blindness, seems to be very high.
Message 25995812
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