Genentech sets price gouging limit for Avastin cancer drug

October 13 2006
Genentech sets price gouging limit for Avastin cancer drug

http://www.newstarget.com/020763.html

(NewsTarget) Earlier this week the pharmaceutical firm Genentech
announced that it would institute a price cap for its cancer drug
Avastin at $55,000 per year for patients with a household income of
less than $75,000 a year.

Genentech's announcement follows a decision by rival drug company Amgen
two weeks ago to begin selling its colon cancer drug Vectibix at $4,000
per dose -- about 20 percent lower than the price of Bristol-Myers
Sqibb's similar drug Erbitux.

The price cap for Avastin comes after the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) approved Genentech's drug for another use, in non-
small cell lung cancer. Doctors had complained that the price of
Avastin was too high for most cancer patients.

Leonard Saltz, a colon cancer specialist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Hospital, said, "[The price cap] really makes me feel that [drug
companies are] at least getting the message that the gravy train is
starting to slow down." Saltz said that even with Genentech's price cap
in place, the cost of Avastin is still "egregiously high," and cancer
drugs in general represent "an unconscionable price gouging."

Genentech spokeswoman Debra Charlesworth said the price cap is "one
step" in the company's efforts to make cancer drugs more affordable for
patients. Since the last quarter of 2005, Genentech has donated $50
million to various charities to help patients cover the high copays on
cancer drugs, including those not made by Genentech.

Charlesworth says the price cap was initiated because patients with
different forms of cancer that Avastin has been approved to treat can
end up paying vastly different prices. For example, lung cancer
patients treated with Avastin pay $56,000 per year on average, while
colon cancer patients pay $44,000. Breast cancer patients are generally
treated for 11 months, and would likely hit the price cap after about
six months, meaning the second half of their treatment would be free.

Although many Genentech investors see the price cap as "good P.R.,"
others believe the company's efforts to control cancer drug prices will
hurt its shares.

Consumer health advocate Mike Adams, author of "Take Back Your Health
Power," says cancer patients are paying unacceptable prices for drug
therapies.

"The cancer industry preys upon the fear of society's most vulnerable
patients, transforming human beings into profit-generating machines,
even as their drugs usually offer no measurable benefit whatsoever,"
Adams said.

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