At a recent FDA hearing Dr. Michael Hawkins, Abraxis’s top medical officer, made a remarkable observation/slip of the tongue about how the company’s $4,200-a-dose cancer drug compared with $150 generic paclitaxel.
Dr. Hawkins said the F.D.A. should approve Abraxane in early-stage patients without a clinical trial because such testing would probably not prove that his company’s drug was different than the conventional treatment.
“These are just two forms of paclitaxel,” he said.
Really, asks Insider? Is that so?
Charging $4,200 a dose for this version of the older cancer drug has helped make Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong (pic) a billionaire.
Abraxane does not help patients live longer than the older treatment, though it does shrink tumors in more patients, according to clinical trials. And the old and new medicines have similar side effects. An independent review of Abraxane published in December in a cancer research journal concluded that the drug was “old wine in a new bottle.”
Insider's view: and people ask why US healthcare spending is out of control!
1 comment:
Cell Therapeutics is developing a drug Xyotax, which is "a biologically-enhanced chemotherapeutic that links paclitaxel, the active ingredient in Taxol®, to a biodegradable polyglutamate polymer, which results in a new chemical entity."
Is this really science? The drug failed to reach its endpoints last year so they switched cancers and started new trials. I'm starting to see a pattern. Paclitaxel is as good as it's going to get.
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