10/08/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/08/2024 13:48
We've discussed how the Inflation Reduction Act's (IRA) price setting policies threaten research and development of new medicines for diabetes, autoimmune diseases and blood clots. Today, we look at the impact of government price setting for patients with blood cancers, since a crucial blood cancer medicine was included in the first round of price setting. The specific form of blood cancer the selected medicine treats is common among Medicare beneficiaries, with an average age of diagnosis of 70 years.
The impact: Blood cancers like leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma are familiar names when it comes to cancer. Together, these blood cancers make up nearly one out of every 10 new cancer cases in the United States. According to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, approximately every nine minutes, someone dies from a form of blood cancer.
How far the industry has come: Groundbreaking new medicines are transforming the way we treat many blood cancers. For example, patients today treated for a common form of chronic leukemia can expect to live normal life spans. These treatment advances are due in large part to targeted therapies that help manage this cancer. Additionally, immunotherapies such as CAR-T cell therapies are used across a wide range of blood cancers and have even been shown to cure many children with advanced forms of leukemia.
Post approval R&D is critically important in advancing new treatments for patients with cancer. The majority of cancer R&D is done after initial FDA approval - more than 60% of oncology medicines approved a decade ago received approval for additional indications for other types of cancer, with most subsequent approval occurring seven or more years after initial approval. Post-approval R&D increases treatment options for patients by demonstrating, for example, that an existing medicine can treat a different disease or patient population, or that a new dosage form or formulation is safe and effective.
Access to blood cancer treatments makes a difference:
IRA threatens the progress on the horizon: America's biopharmaceutical researchers are developing hundreds of new therapies for different blood cancers, including 162 potential treatments for lymphoma, 158 for leukemia and 84 possible new treatments for multiple myeloma. Unfortunately, setting the price of medicines treating blood cancers puts R&D at risk.
The IRA discourages the post-approval R&D that is so critical to realizing the full potential of cancer medicines. The first round of price setting illustrates this disincentive in action:
The bottom line: Since the government-set price applies to a medicine regardless of what disease it's treating or its form, the law discourages the costly and time-consuming clinical research needed to further research and develop therapies for patients with blood cancers.
Until policymakers fix the flaws in the law, patients with blood cancers and other diseases will unfortunately be the collateral damage of this price-setting scheme. Learn more about how price setting can undercut the immense value new medicines provide.