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‘Is curing patients a sustainable business model?’

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Ulcerative Colitis
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Posted 12/25/2019 11:28 AM (GMT -7)
You can't make this stuff up because no one will believe you.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/goldman-asks-is-curing-patients-a-sustainable-business-model.html
Goldman Sachs analysts attempted to address a touchy subject for biotech companies, especially those involved in the pioneering “Gene Therapy” treatment: cures could be bad for business in the long run.

“Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” analysts ask in an April 10 report entitled “The Genome Revolution.”
Posted 12/25/2019 2:41 PM (GMT -7)
Big pharma doesn't want disease cures, they want customers. Their drugs are designed to treat symptoms so we can sort of function but they want us to be dependent on them for life.
Posted 12/25/2019 4:12 PM (GMT -7)
Such nonsense.
There will always be illnesses to treat, and finding a cure earns billions of dollars.
Posted 12/25/2019 4:42 PM (GMT -7)
Sigh....seems naive to believe there are actual cures for everything. Obviously, the drugs that have helped through research and development is just a load of crap 🤔?

q
Posted 12/26/2019 6:43 AM (GMT -7)
I'd say the premise is a bit absurd. Cures do exist, like for Hepatatis C, the drug sofosbuvir, at $1,000 per pill, or $84,000 for a three-month course of treatment to cure a patient. Seems pretty profitable to me to cure someone.

But let's related that back to a maintenance treatment cost and look at that $84k figure versus a drug used monthly. I do not know the cost of maintenance treatments of Hep C, so let's used mesalamine instead. Assume 1-bottle of mesalamine costs $1,000 for a 30-day supply. That 84k figure is 84 months of maintenance treatment, or 7-years of maintenance treatments that they get paid for right way, upfront with the cure.

As expensive as Humira or other bioligics are, there's no guarantee someone will be on the same biologic for life. We read about patients switching among them all of the time here. So, someone might be on Humira for a couple years then switch, so Abbrive isn't getting a paycheck for life from you/I. And we all know insurance makes us switch mesalamine brands at a whim, so no guarantee Shire is going to get my/your business for life on bottles of Lialda.

I'd wager getting paid in-full for 7-years of maintenance med up front (that is the cure) is a lot more profitable and a lot less risky than on going maintenance treatment is for a drug company.
Posted 12/26/2019 8:08 PM (GMT -7)
I believe financial incentives can divert resources away from curing certain illnesses, not that drug companies are secretly designing drugs only to treat symptoms while hiding away the cures. For example, a start-up may decide that developing biosimilars is better business than researching different mechanisms which may cause or contribute to a particular illness.

When a drug company performs a clinical trial, that compound and the trial results become public record. I find it hard to believe that they know which compounds will simply manage a disease and which will cure it ahead of time.
Posted 12/27/2019 9:00 AM (GMT -7)

ambling said...
Such nonsense.
There will always be illnesses to treat, and finding a cure earns billions of dollars.

Agreed.
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