CancerCast: Big Pharma

My last post, with the link to a radio show episode, was so popular that I'm giving you something else to listen to: a cancer podcast episode.

The podcast is called CancerCast, and it is produced by Weill Cornell Medicine, a medical school in New York City. In this episode, the host, Lymphoma Rock Star Dr. John Leonard, speaks about The Business of Cancer Drug Development. His guest is Dr. David Schenkein, a lymphoma specialist who now works for a couple of companies that make cancer treatments. The link includes the podcast itself and a written transcript.

He speaks about the process that a cancer drug goes to, from how scientists get ideas about what to try, up to getting approved by the FDA or other regulatory bodies. It's an interesting 30 minutes.

If you're like me, you probably have a kind of love/hate relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. Particularly in the United States, we hear lots of stories about  drug makers who charge large amounts of money, sometimes increasing the prices of drugs for no reason other than to increase profits. (One very well-known example happened last year, with huge, random price increase for a medication that is very important to someone I love. It made me very, very angry.)

That's the "hate" part.

On the other hand, I've been alive for the last 10 years because of Rituxan. So I can't be too mad about that. There's definitely some "love" there.

As Dr. Schenkein explains, cancer treatments are so expensive because they do take up to 10 years to go from an idea to a pharmacy shelf. There's a lot of work there, and that work costs money. And, as he also explains, about 1 out of every 20 drugs that begin the process actually makes it al the way to approval. So 5% of treatments pay for the development of the other 95%, since they never make any money to cover their costs.

Dr. Schenkein also blames a few bad people in the industry for its bad reputation. Most do not want to put profits over patients, but do have a responsibility to employees and investors to make a profit. And, he says, many people working in the industry have a personal connection to the disease they are dealing with -- maybe a family member or friend who is affected by it. (I know that this is sometimes true. I've met people who work on diseases that affect people they love.) Not all of them, but some.

Part of the solution, he thinks, might come from the health insurance industry, taking on more of the cost so the patient doesn't have to. (Which might be true, though that also conveniently puts the price burden on someone other than the drug makers.) There is a lot that needs to be done in the healthcare field in the U.S. to make thing more affordable for patients, and I'm not smart enough to tell you what that is, but I've been saying that for about 8 years now. It would be great if someone came up with a solution.

One very positive thing: he thinks we're on the verge of an explosion in new treatments, with some of them curing some diseases. (He didn't mention Follicular Lymphoma, or any other disease, in particular.) As you may know from reading this blog, I always love to hear the excitement in the voices of experts when they talk about future treatments. It gives me hope. Maybe that excitement comes because the expert sees the profits that might be made, but I'll put that aside and just enjoy the idea that science might be catching up with cancer sometime soon.

I can't say that the podcast really changed my mind -- still some love, still some hate -- but it did provide some information and insight that I didn't have before.

For me, that matters a lot. Information is power, and the more we know as patients, the better off we are.