Torcetrapib to be sold by itself
Pfizer has wisely decided to sell torcetrapib by itself instead of combining it with Lipitor alone. There is a market for this, and I think Pfizer has made a wise decision in deciding to do this.
By offering torcetrapib only in a combination pill, Pfizer would have forced patients taking other statins — like Zocor, from Merck — to switch to Lipitor if they wanted torcetrapib’s benefits.
In an interview last year, Dr. John L. LaMattina, Pfizer’s top scientist, defended the company’s plans, saying that the costs of testing torcetrapib alongside every statin would be prohibitive. Already, Pfizer says it is spending $800 million to develop torcetrapib. Pfizer is the world’s largest drug maker, with sales of $51 billion and a profit of $8 billion last year.
Yummay! Pepto -Bismol ice cream…
Or should I say… gross. This guy took Pepto-Bismol and turned it into a favorite dairy product.
The taste? Actually, it’s quite nice. The vanilla and sugar temper the metallic bitterness of the medicine, giving the end result a flavour not too dissimilar to black cherry. And as a hangover cure? Initial studies are encouraging, with no negative side-effects experienced as yet. A mild mid-week drinking session provided the first test, and while my cross-breed concoction certainly didn’t eliminate the suffering altogether, the benefits did not go unnoticed.
Haha, nice!
(Just don't try the paracetamol/acetaminophen/Tylenol bacon roll if you've been drinking…)
[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, Pepto-Bismol, ice cream, hangovers, alcohol[/tags]
Avastin more expensive than it should be?
There's an article in today's USA Today ("Cancer care can sap a lifetime of savings"). The premise of the article is that Genentech is profiteering off the backs of US taxpayers because the NCI funded research into their blockbuster Avastin.
According to the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, NCI scientists discovered or developed about half the drugs now used to treat cancer.
For example, the institute spent $45 million to study the Genentech-marketed Avastin, one of the drugs used to treat Beck's colon cancer. "It's unfair," Beck says. "We've already paid for this."
Problem is, the average drug takes about $500 million to develop from NCE stage to an FDA-approved, marketable product. Avastin is not an average drug. It was more expensive than your average PPI or ARB — so how much did it cost to bring from formative stages to the Avastin that we know and love today? Martha Stewart scandal aside, you're looking at probably $500-800 million. (Just a guess, but it would be in line with some of the other biologic drugs on the market.)
And Avastin works. Pretty damn well. Targeted therapies like Avastin are significantly more expensive than their non-targeted counterparts. If any counterparts exist. In Avastin's case, it stands alone.
While I sympathize with Mr. Beck's condition, he clearly has no grasp of healthcare economics.
"Price controls have never succeeded in keeping down costs or expanding access," Johnson says. "Studies demonstrate that they inhibit future research and development that patients need and expect from the world's leading pharmaceutical innovators.
Indeed. As Zycher from Drugwonks points out, "how much does a drug cost if it's not available?"
In the words of Ginny at Rx Daily Dose: "With price controls, there'd be fewer specialty cancer therapies. Period." So cancer can sap a lifetime of savings, but let's not forget the obvious corollary.
Counterpoint in USA Today: "Drug companies' risk-taking saves lives"
[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, Avastin, cancer, oncology, economics, healthcare[/tags]
Mass producing insulin from Safflower?
When insulin was discovered in 1921 and a method developed to produce it in sufficiently large quantities, it revolutionized medicine. Instead of being a deadly disease, diabetes turned into something that was treatable and allowed one to go about living a largely normal life. One of the most notable things about the development of mass-produced insulin was that the two men, Frederick Grant Banting and Charles Herbert Best didn't patent their method, and instead made it freely available it to the rest of the world*. This is one of the most notable times in the history of modern science when a truly significant breakthrough wasn't monetized. (The timeline for insulin is good, short reading if you're interested — it's rare to see unselfish altruism when there's huge dollars at stake.)
Of course they won the Nobel Prize for their efforts, and made medical history. But despite advances in purity, and decreased allergic reactions to non-self insulin, it remains quite expensive. Prohibitively so for those outside the first-world. Perhaps in a strange twist of irony, diabetes is more prevalent here in the first world than it is elsewhere largely because of the lifestyle many choose to live. (Huge quantities of synthetic sugars, etc.) Nonetheless, it is a killer elsewhere as well.
Tysabri: really back now.
On June 7, Tysabri was re-approved for the market. Now it's really, truly back, as in available to patients. But only if they go to special clinics registered with the TOUCH program:
"Under the Programonly prescribers, infusion centers and pharmacies associated with infusion centers registered in the TOUCH program are able to prescribe, infuse or distribute Tysabri," Elan said in a statement.
It said it had contracted with a single distribution company and 12 specialty pharmacies to handle the drug.
Good news for patients, and good news for Elan, who nearly went bankrupt in 2002. Looks like everyone wins this time.
[tags]Medicine, pharmacy, Elan, Tysabri[/tags]
Images from medieval medicine
There's a new image database from UCLA cataloging medieval medical images. It's an interesting little website, particularly if you've got an interest in art, history, or historical medicine. Some of the science is dead wrong (duh), but it's pretty cool from a historical standpoint.
The Index of Medieval Medical Images project began in 1988 and aimed to describe and index the content of all medieval manuscript images (up to the year 1500) with medical components held in North American collections. The goal of this 2001 pilot project was to make a substantial sample of the images and descriptions available via a searchable database on the Web.
Try a search if you're so inclined, or you can browse by subject.
As technology and science has progressed, our quality of life has improved and our lifespans have gotten longer, leading to different challenges as we live to be older and hopefully wiser.
[tags]Medicine, medieval, history, art[/tags]
Evidence-based medicine in the Real World™
I love to see this stuff, and (as you might have guessed) the article was the catalyst for me gushing about the impact of technology on the future of medicine in my primer on evidence-based medicine.
Instead of Willey having to rely strictly on his experience and memory, the computer kicks out the latest information that he can use for his patients.
[...]
For example, Willey showed the computer's reply to a diagnosis of an ear infection that was caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Conventional medicine says the most common antibiotic, amoxicillin, doesn't work on resistant bacteria. But the information in the computer said studies had shown that doubling the dosage of amoxicillin would cure the infection and was safe.