Cancer drug prices must come down

Leading scientists from the UK and US have claimed that the high price of new cancer drugs is indefensible and unsustainable.

Writing a paper in the journal Cell, the Institute of Cancer Research in the UK and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center argue that the price of cancer drugs must be lowered in order to keep lifesaving drugs ‘available and affordable’ to patients.

In the UK drugs that might prolong life are rejected for NHS use because of their price, while the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the US is unaffordable cancer bills.

Professor Paul Workman, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, praised the current levels of work being undertaken, but highlighted that it lacks meaning if the drugs, which may have to be used in combination, remain unaffordable.

He said: “All this invention is meaningless if patients cannot afford these drugs. It is unsustainable. For those of us involved in research, it is disturbing that the amount of research that goes on and the success that is made is not translated into treatment for patients. And for patients it is a terrible situation.”

Workman suggests that academic discovery centres, such as the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), create new relationships with new commercial partners, such as smaller drug firms who are more likely to agree capping the price when the drug reaches the market. This, even in the early stages, would ‘open mature conversation’.

Elsewhere, former UK drugs regulator Sir Alasdair Breckenridge has warned the the Department of Health that patients in the UK could face delays getting new drugs, including important cancer medicines, if Britain withdraws from the EU's medicines regulator, as part of its Brexit negotiations.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned that he does not expect the UK to remain within the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which is currently based England and authorises drugs for use across the EU.

Breckenridge, who was chairman of the UK's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), has said that the UK market, post-Brexit, will be much smaller than the EU market, meaning that many companies may need to pay for a separate assessment of their product for use in the UK, discouraging them to operate in the UK.

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, the current chairman of the MHRA, has echoed Breckenridge concerns by highlighting that the UK is ‘only three per cent of the world market for new drugs’, and that the UK risks entering the market ‘at the back of the queue’.