Professor David Cameron, an expert in breast cancer from Edinburgh University, said new treatments were increasingly being developed which targeted specific subtypes of cancer, helping make them more effective.
"These drugs are expensive. Some of that is the real cost of developing them and some of that is if you are only going for a subset of cancer then your total predicted sales will be less," Prof Cameron told The Scotsman. "The business model of the company will be that in order to develop the money to develop the drug your subsequent sales in the patent lifetime have to be sufficient to cover all your costs. So actually, the cost for rarer cancer is likely to be higher and not lower."
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Professor Karol Sikora said it was no longer viable to provide the best treatment to all patients free of charge, and that delivering new anti-cancer drugs would render the NHS penniless.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking at a pharmaceutical conference in London last week, the former head of cancer at the World Health Organisation said: "Over the next few years the best cancer care is probably going to become a preserve of the rich everywhere."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8788016/Best-cancer-treatments-could-be-preserve-of-the-rich.html