targeted drugs are life-saving drugs for many cancer patients. Although many targeted drugs have been included in medical insurance in China, many targeted drugs still need to be paid at their own expense, with tens of thousands a month and millions a year.
Why are targeted drugs so expensive? In my country, which cancer-targeted drugs have been included in medical insurance?
Why are targeted drugs so expensive?
As everyone knows, the targeted therapy of malignant tumor drugs is mainly aimed at a certain target or several targets in malignant tumor cells to achieve the effect of inhibiting tumor cell proliferation.
Compared with the traditional chemotherapy for malignant tumors, , drug-targeted therapy can well avoid the common ills of ordinary chemotherapy that both good and bad cells kill, and targeted therapy is more targeted. If you take war as an analogy, chemotherapy is indiscriminate bombardment, while targeted therapy is precise and targeted elimination.
Of course, although the targeted drug does bring good news to some cancer patients, its high price also discourages many ordinary working-class people. I believe many people will ask: Why is the price of targeted drugs so expensive? To illustrate this point, we must know the possible parts of the targeted drugs we buy:
First, the drug’s own research and development costs . Any new drug needs to go through a rather long process from discovery, screening, optimized synthesis, pre-clinical research, and clinical research, to the final approval of the drug. This process usually takes 10-15 years time and is costly. Generally at least $1 billion or more. Once a problem occurs in a certain part of this process, all investments will be lost, which can be described as high-risk and high-yield;
Second,Various sales and distribution costs. If imported drugs are required to pay import tariffs, this proportion is about 5%-8%, and consumers need to pay for this part. In addition, the promotion and transportation of medicines, as well as the layer-by-layer price increase by distributors at all levels, also objectively pushed up the price of medicines. In addition, for imported drugs, in addition to import tariffs, there is another tax that cannot be ignored, that is, import value-added tax, which is about 17%. No doubt, this will eventually fall on consumers;
other Third, the approval cost of drugs in my country. For imported drugs, even if they have been approved abroad, if they need to enter my country, they need to complete clinical trials before they can be approved. The cost of these approvals will undoubtedly be paid by consumers.
Good news: the price of targeted drugs is constantly falling!
R&D, circulation, and approval constitute the reasons for the high prices of targeted drugs. However, in fact, the prices of targeted drugs are also constantly falling.
Take lung cancer as an example. When targeted drugs were just launched, the price was surprisingly high. For example, taking , gefitinib, cost about 16,000 yuan a month, and the initial price of the third-generation TKI reached 50,000 yuan. Yuan per month.
Fortunately in recent years, due to the strong government action, adopts the method of national price negotiation. The prices of these two drugs have dropped significantly. Patients with gefitinib only pay 200-300 yuan per month , even if the third The new generation of osimertinib only costs about 3,000 yuan a month after entering the medical insurance. Compared with the original price, it can be said that it is high quality and low price.
Collection and preservation: These targeted drugs have entered the medical insurance
In fact, due to the intervention of the state, many unattainable targeted drugs have returned to the ground in the past, it should be said that they are brought to the general public Here comes the benefits.Don’t get too many targeted drugs into health insurance:
non-small cell lung cancer : gefitinib, erlotinib, icotinib, afatinib, ossitinib, ametinib, Anlotinib, Crizotinib, Ceritinib, Aletinib, Bevacizumab, Recombinant Human Vascular Endothelial Inhibitor;
Colorectal cancer: Cetuximab, Bevacizumab Monoclonal antibodies, regorafenib, fruquintinib;
gastrointestinal stromal tumor: regorafenib, imatinib; sunitinib
gastric cancer and gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma: trastuzumab, apatinib;
renal cell carcinoma axipanib: , Sorafenib, everolimus, sunitinib;
neuroendocrine tumor: everolimus, sunitinib;
breast cancer: trastuzumab Monoclonal antibody, inituzumab, pertuzumab, pyrrotinib, fulvestrant;
ovarian cancer, fallopian tube cancer or primary peritoneal cancer: Olaparib , niraparib;
prostate cancer: en Zalutamide, abiraterone;
hepatocellular carcinoma: regorafenib, sorafenib, lenvatinib;
thyroid cancer: sorafenib; sorafenib
nasopharyngeal carcinoma: nimotuzumab ;
melanoma : vermofinib, trametinib, _p1span pstrong Subependymal giant cell astrocytoma: everolimus;
Renal angiomyolipoma : everolimus;
hematological tumor: _strong4span 15span Dasatinib, flumatinib, nilotinib, ibrutinib, zebutinib, rucotinib, azacitidine, rituximab, chidamide , Bortezomib.
However, although drug-targeted therapy for malignant tumors does extend the survival time of patients, due to the heterogeneity of malignant tumors, targeted therapy still has the problem of drug resistance after a period of time Therefore, the continuous development of new targeted anti-tumor drugs is bound to become inevitable. Naturally, this will still repeat the previous listing of new drugs → high prices → gradual decline in prices → enter the cycle of medical insurance. Targeted drug therapy has a long way to go.
For more cancer and health related knowledge, please continue to pay attention to [Dr. Li talks about cancer prevention]!
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