Cientistas do RU contra custos de tratamentos contra o cancro.
Citando:
"Pharmaceutical companies used to justify their prices by pointing to the high cost of clinical trials involving many thousands of patients. But that is no longer always necessary, the scientists say in their paper. The new targeted drugs require a test for a genetic biomarker to see whether patients will respond or not. That means the drug can be trialled on far fewer people. The drug crizotinib, used for advanced lung cancer, was approved following a trial involving only 347 patients, they point out. Trastuzumab (Herceptin) was first approved for advanced breast cancer and later for early breast cancer, increasing the market for the company but with no reduction in price."
(...)
"Workman, together with colleagues from the US and the Netherlands, proposes that academic discovery centres like his should forge relationships with new commercial partners – probably not the major drug companies but smaller biotech or generic drug firms. Academics should take greater control of the drugs they discover, they argue, and join with small companies that will agree to cap the price when the drug reaches the market. They would not have the expectation of big profit margins, as the major pharmaceutical companies do. But in an era where drugs are tested on smaller populations and genetic testing means they are more likely to be effective, they would not need to “cost in” all the failed attempts at producing blockbusters, as the big companies do."