Cancer patients will miss out on the next generation of lifesaving medicines because prices are spiraling out of control, a leading British scientist warned.
Professor Paul Workman accused pharmaceutical giants of charging the very highest prices the NHS can bear.
He said soon the NHS will not be able to afford these soaring price tags, some of which have already reached £80,000 a year.
NHS rationing watchdog NICE is already having to routinely reject cutting-edge cancer medicines for use on the NHS because of cost.
In the last month alone two revolutionary breast cancer treatments – Kadcyla, for which Roche charges £72,000 a year and Palbociclib, which Pfizer prices at £38,000 – have been given draft rejections by NICE because of cost.
Professor Paul Workman said pharmaceutical giants are charging the very highest prices the NHS can bear (stock)
When drugs are combined to mount twin attacks on tumours – an approach which is currently being trialled for lung and skin cancer drugs – the price of the most expensive treatments are projected to hit £127,000 a year.
Professor Workman, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said pharmaceutical companies have got used to big profit margins, meaning they charge as much as they can.
Writing in the scientific journal Cell, Professor Workman called for a new business model for drug development.
He said universities researching new drugs should team up with small private enterprises, rather than huge drug firms, to keep costs down.
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Professor Workman said: ‘It’s essential that we find ways of making sure that patients can benefit from the very latest, highly innovative cancer treatments.
‘It just won’t be possible for healthcare systems like the NHS to afford the newest and best cancer drugs if prices continue to rise as rapidly as they are now – let alone to be able to cover the cost of new combination treatments made up of several different drugs.
‘If we’re to end this era of £80,000 cancer drugs, we’re going to have to make some radical changes to the whole way drugs are discovered and developed.’
Professor Workman, who co-wrote the piece with leading scientists from Netherlands and the US, called for a ‘radical’ change that would ‘disrupt’ the status quo.
NHS rationing watchdog NICE is already having to routinely reject cutting-edge cancer medicines for use on the NHS because of cost (stock)
At the moment when academics discover new drugs their universities usually sell the licence to pharmaceutical companies, which conduct clinical trials and take the drug through regulation to market.
But as part of this deal the firms are able to charge what they want.
Professor Workman said companies often fail to pass on savings in research costs and usually price new cancer treatments at whatever they feel the market can bear.
Instead, universities should target smaller companies, in return for agreeing to cap the price at which the drugs are eventually sold.
Big drug companies insist their prices are justified by the huge outlay on logistics, administration and researching medicines which never come to market.
But if universities take the burden of the research risk, and small companies are used for logistics and production, costs could be cut, the authors said.
‘I believe the solution is for an increasing proportion of drug discovery to be driven forward by academic scientists,’ Professor Workman said.
BREAST CANCER DRUG REJECTED
A revolutionary drug considered ‘the closest thing to a cure’ ever developed for breast cancer is set to be rejected for use on the NHS, officials announced last week.
Experts said the decision highlights a serious problem at the heart of England’ s drug appraisal system – and called for an urgent overhaul of the NHS drugs watchdog.
Palbociclib halts the most common form of breast cancer in its tracks, freezing the growth of aggressive tumours.
This delays the need for gruelling chemotherapy, enabling women to lead normal lives for years at a time.
‘And in addition we need academic organisations to become braver at moving new treatments into clinical trials and onto the market – increasingly by working in partnership with companies in creative new approaches rather than limiting their partnerships to the traditional pharmaceutical industry model.
‘It’s important that in the new models we create we have sufficient expertise, experience and resources to ensure that drugs are progressed both intelligently and rapidly so that cancer patients can receive drugs as quickly as possible, as well as at affordable prices.’
British drug companies defended their record. Dr Rebecca Lumsden, head of science policy at the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, said: ‘Making a new medicine requires considerable time, investment and expertise.
‘The global pharma industry spends around £88billion a year on research and development to bring new treatments to patients.
‘This means there are 1,919 cancer, 401 diabetes, 208 HIV/AIDS and 563 cardiovascular drugs in development today.
‘We welcome the opportunity to work with all partners to develop new models that could bring drugs to patients faster.’