MS drug to be sold x20 higher after rebrand - Page 16

On October 14 2012 11:16 calgar wrote:
In defense of the pharmaceutical industry, I don't think people really appreciate how difficult it is to develop a drug. From initial discovery to marketplace delivery generally takes 13-15 years. No other product or industry has such a long inception to market time. The costs for developing a drug are estimated to be upwards of a billion dollars these days. You have teams of lab researchers analyzing data from high throughput scans to find thousands of compounds that show affinity to a certain receptor. Then you have to weed out candidates and optimize them based on structure-activity relationships which takes a few years. This is expensive. You have to do tox studies (phase I), followed by more expensive phase II studies that look at basic efficacy in 100 or so patients. Then you have several more years of testing for phase III studies in a larger population. At any point in this timeline if a drug shows toxicity, bad adverse reactions, or lack of efficacy, it is canned. A drug continues to be analyzed after release in phase IV studies and can still get pulled. If you have to withdraw it then that's a huge monetary loss. This difficulty means a very low success rate for initial compounds; we're talking less than 1 in 10,000 that will actually make it through.

So yeah, it's easy to paint them as the bad guys because your Lipitor costs a shitload, but it costs a lot for a reason. The costs for development have skyrocketed in the last 15-20 years. It's an unsustainable model right now... Developing drugs is such an expensive process that 'orphan' diseases that don't have a large sales market are a losing investment to develop a treatment. The government has to subsidize research into these conditions.

So yes, a new patent for a different indication can be misconstrued as evil and immoral. But it's really just about capitalism and making money, which we all support right? The article is poorly written and shows a lack of fundamental understanding regarding the process. "is expected to relaunch it under the trade name, Lemtrada, at what could be many times its current price". The entire thing is just speculation right now.

On October 15 2012 02:26 Djzapz wrote:

I'd like to add that even free market proponents should realize the danger of monopolies. And I don't care if other pharmaceutic companies are selling this drug or intend to or whatever the situation is, but when you can hike your prices to 20x what they used to be, you know something bad is happening - the healthy competition isn't there.

Even in cruel ole' capitalism, this is not acceptable. Especially since you know this decision had to be made by some suits who absolutely know that the only thing that allows them to hike their prices that high is the fact that their "customers" don't have a choice because they need to huh... not die... Get people addicted, then hike the price dramatically - it's dirty. But I bet even the crummiest street corner dealers don't get away with such dramatic price increases.

On top of that, it doesn't matter that drugs cost a lot to produce. Not in this particular case. It doesn't cost the company extra to have their medicine happen to have unexpected effects. The R&D costs and the production costs were presumably good when they sold it for its intended purpose. It didn't suddenly start costing them 20x more. In fact, they were making extra profits since they sold a higher volume.

So indeed, this stuff shouldn't be left in the hands of greedy men. At least not without a healthy dose of competition instead of that legal monopoly BS and perhaps cartels.

On October 15 2012 03:55 FabledIntegral wrote:


The point is that there shouldn't be competition during a patent. You're supposed to have a monopoly. They can price as they choose. Patent law might be broken, but it doesn't detract from the fact monopolies are not the issue. It's duration and ease of acquiring/renewing patents that are an issue.

On October 14 2012 11:16 calgar wrote:
In defense of the pharmaceutical industry, I don't think people really appreciate how difficult it is to develop a drug. From initial discovery to marketplace delivery generally takes 13-15 years. No other product or industry has such a long inception to market time. The costs for developing a drug are estimated to be upwards of a billion dollars these days. You have teams of lab researchers analyzing data from high throughput scans to find thousands of compounds that show affinity to a certain receptor. Then you have to weed out candidates and optimize them based on structure-activity relationships which takes a few years. This is expensive. You have to do tox studies (phase I), followed by more expensive phase II studies that look at basic efficacy in 100 or so patients. Then you have several more years of testing for phase III studies in a larger population. At any point in this timeline if a drug shows toxicity, bad adverse reactions, or lack of efficacy, it is canned. A drug continues to be analyzed after release in phase IV studies and can still get pulled. If you have to withdraw it then that's a huge monetary loss. This difficulty means a very low success rate for initial compounds; we're talking less than 1 in 10,000 that will actually make it through.

So yeah, it's easy to paint them as the bad guys because your Lipitor costs a shitload, but it costs a lot for a reason. The costs for development have skyrocketed in the last 15-20 years. It's an unsustainable model right now... Developing drugs is such an expensive process that 'orphan' diseases that don't have a large sales market are a losing investment to develop a treatment. The government has to subsidize research into these conditions.

So yes, a new patent for a different indication can be misconstrued as evil and immoral. But it's really just about capitalism and making money, which we all support right? The article is poorly written and shows a lack of fundamental understanding regarding the process. "is expected to relaunch it under the trade name, Lemtrada, at what could be many times its current price". The entire thing is just speculation right now.