The price tag is not cheap though at a wholesale price of $5,900 a month and add on Herceptin at $4500 a month to it, so we are now up to $10k a month for both drugs. If insurance will not cover or if patients do not have insurance Genentech said they have programs to help people obtain them. 
The bad news here though is there may not be enough to go around for a while as there has been issues with production so it’s approved and hopefully this will be remedied shortly. Usually it’s been the generic cancer drugs that have been short for patients and not an expensive name brand. The FDA is also requesting that future lots also be approved as some of the cells used to produce the drug were growing too slow. Genentech is also working on a 3rd drug for HER2 breast cancer and recently reported some positive clinical trial results. BD
Genentech won federal approval Friday for a new drug to treat advanced breast cancer. But the company said it was experiencing manufacturing problems that could lead to a shortage of the drug.
The drug, called Perjeta, is meant to be used with Genentech’s existing drug Herceptin to treat breast cancers characterized by high levels of a protein called Her2, which amount to about 20 percent of total breast cancers.
Perjeta will have a wholesale cost of $5,900 a month for the typical woman, Genentech said. When used with Herceptin, which costs $4,500 a month, a typical 18-month course of treatment would be more than $187,000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/09/business/genentech-wins-approval-for-new-breast-cancer-drug.html?smid=tw-nytimesbusiness&seid=auto
No comments:
Post a Comment