In a sign that drug companies may be reaching the limits of how high they can price cancer drugs, Amgen won approval yesterday for its colorectal cancer drug Vectibix and set the price 20 percent below that of ImClone Systems’ Erbitux, a very similar product.
The move by Amgen appeared to be both a competitive strategy and an acknowledgment of recent public concerns about the costs of some of the newest cancer drugs, which run tens of thousands of dollars a year.
Still, Vectibix will cost $4,000 for an infusion every two weeks, or more than $100,000 for a year’s treatment, though most of the patients for whom the drug is approved are expected to survive only a few months.
Dr. Leonard B. Saltz, a colon cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan, said: “I don’t think this solves the problem in any way, shape or form in terms of the ridiculous price of chemotherapy drugs. It is a baby step in the right direction.”
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