The Fashion Challenges of the Emperor of Hepatitis C Treatment - Now in the BMJ, but Who Will Notice?
As we wrote, most recently last week, the hepatitis C screening and treatment bandwagon keeps rolling along. There is constant public argument whether about the prices of treatment regimens, which approach $100,000 per patient in the US. However, nearly all the public chatter, which seems mostly to come from corporate public relations people and marketers, investors and investment advisers, physicians with financial conflicts of interest, and pundits with little background in clinical epidemiology, seems never to question the assumption that the new drugs for hepatitis C are miraculous cures, which, of course, ...
Source: Health Care Renewal - January 15, 2015 Category: Health Management Tags: clinical trials evidence-based medicine health care prices hepatitis C Sovaldi Source Type: blogs
What ails Big Pharma?
By Katherine EbanOne of America's most far-seeing companies, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, the biopharmaceutical startup so memorably chronicled in journalist Barry Werth's classic book, The Billion Dollar Molecule: The Quest for the Perfect Drug, is back.Or rather, twenty years later, Werth is back with the sequel, The Antidote: Inside the World of New Pharma. The book revisits Vertex as the company grows into adolescence and actually achieves its goal of bringing a drug to market. Even though there is less drama this time and more mundane human-resource type challenges, Werth's excellent writing takes the reader deep into the ...
Source: PharmaGossip - March 13, 2014 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
A Fading Vertex Drug Was Also Fastest To Become A Blockbuster
How is this for irony? The same week that Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) cuts 15 percent of its workforce due to plunging sales of its Incivek treatment for hepatitis C, the drug has been identified as having achieved blockbuster status faster than any other medicine. Incivek was launched in 2011, by the way, and surpassed Celebrex, which is sold by Pfizer (PFE) but was launched in 1999 by Pharmacia.
The analysis was conducted by EvaluatePharma which reviewed quarterly US products sales and aggregated the first four full quarters after each drug launch in the region. Only five drugs have ever achieved blockbuster status in ...
Source: Pharmalot - October 31, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: esilverman Source Type: blogs
Vertex Cuts 15 Percent Of Its Workforce On Plunging Hep C Sales
How competitive is the market for hepatitis C treatments? In May 2011, Vertex Pharmaceuticals won FDA approval to sell its Incivek medication to treat people who have the most common strain. The drug became one of the fastest-selling medicines ever, generating more than $450 million in the fourth quarter that year, and helped Vertex become a hot stock on Wall Street.
Now, Vertex is cutting 370 jobs, or 15 percent of its workforce, thanks to plummeting Incivek sales. The drugmaker acknowledged today that the number of hepatitis C patients being treated with Incivek has dropped quickly as a new generation of medicines is a...
Source: Pharmalot - October 29, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: esilverman Source Type: blogs
The Myth of the New
New Drugs Are Barely An Improvement Over Decades-Old Standbys, Study FindsBy Sharon BegleyNEW YORK, June 3 (Reuters) - Despite the more than $50 billion that U.S. pharmaceutical companies have spent every year since the mid-2000s to discover new medications, drugmakers have barely improved on old standbys developed decades ago.Research published on Monday showed that the effectiveness of new drugs, as measured by comparing the response of patients on those treatments to those taking a placebo, has plummeted since the 1970s.While that is already unwelcome news to drug and biotech companies, the consequences for the pharmace...
Source: PharmaGossip - June 4, 2013 Category: Pharma Commentators Authors: insider Source Type: blogs
