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Cancer Drugs’ ‘Spectacular Costs’ Shift Market Dynamic, MDs Say at NCCN Annual Conference

HOLLYWOOD, Fla., March 16, 2007 — With patients forced to pay a greater percentage out of pocket for high-priced therapies, some companies have abandoned promising anti-cancer drugs rather than devote hundreds of millions of dollars to complete all phases of a clinical trial, an industry analyst said at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s 12th Annual Conference, March 14-18.

“There is a changing dynamic,” said Schumarry Chao, M.D., MBA, whose company advises CEOs on prescription drug pricing. “Companies are doing more market-driven research. In one case, a company decided based on the trend [of health insurers passing costs onto consumers] that it was not going to invest $400 million in Phase 3 and Phase 4 clinical trials and to pull the plug on the product.”

“It’s also about a much larger set of issues,” said Deborah Schrag, M.D., of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. “When the costs of prescription drugs go up, the premiums go up. It’s harder for employers to provide insurance.”

The roundtable discussion, titled “Cancer Care – Cost, Access, and Value,’’ came on the heels of a March 15 Wall Street Journal article listing the costs of treating cancer patients with drugs coming to market since 2004. Costs ranged from $36,000 to $67,000. According to NCCN panel member Lee Newcomer, M.D., MHA, of United Healthcare, the true cost of delivering one extra year of life to one patient with lung cancer is $354 thousand because of today’s cookie-cutter approach to chemotherapy: “You don’t know in advance who is going to respond.” Unfortunately, the subject of “what we are getting for the money” in terms of cancer therapies is “taboo,” Newcomer said.