Hey, anyone have access to and care to post from this : Synthesis of Stable Isotope Labeled Analogs of the Anti-Hepatitis C Virus Nucleotide Prodrugs PSI-7977 and PSI-352938. I just want to know about how it's made, and why they're charging so much, and if it would be possible for say, chinese labs (china btw, has 29 million infected with HCV) to do a custom synth seeing as this is a legal substance and they don't seem to care so much at all about american patent law. Anyhow, let me be clear, this is a matter of curiosity, basically, i want see how bad they're fucking everyone.
-
N&PD Moderators: Skorpio
Criminal company charging arm and leg for hep c vaccine, i need a journal article
- Thread starter cdin
- Start date
nAON
Bluelight Crew
Dunno much about shit like this, but I assume it would involve engineering a viral fragment, rather than purely chemical synth. Probably more complicated and tighter regulated.
Here's link for the study : http://www.pdfhost.net/index.php?Action=Download&File=1e4e792f66e19720e4d03d9089b7af10Last edited:
sekio
Bluelight Crew
because drug companies have to amortize every failed drug into the cost of drugs that do work otherwise the people who do the research won't get paid
sekio
Bluelight Crew
See those big numbers on the end of the drug code names? It sort of implies the database of compounds they screened is rather large... (before you say they're padding their stats... companies like glaxo smith kline and friends have probably millions of compounds screened... 300,000 is not out of reach today with combinatorial chemistry) I bet you they have made and screened at least 300,000 compounds, and out of them... 2 are active? So at a measly $100 per drug candidate that is still, conservatively, 30 million dollars on R&D alone... not counting approval/regulatory/marketing/human tox screening costs... or paying the researchers, or for the facility to work in, and electricity and property taxes...
If you want to open up shop in India and do better, go right ahead. Nobody is stopping you. The next time you invent a disease curing compound on the very first try you can sell it for $100 a dose, but otherwise I think you'll go hungry by the 30,000th compound you screen.
Or maybe you should write your congresscritters and demand they stop paying medical researchers so much. I'm sure that that will move us forward.
Reddit thread for more info.Last edited:
atara
Bluelighter
Sofosbuvir is a phosphate diester monoamide bound to a saccharide with five total chiral centers. It's a horrible synthetic nightmare. It was hard enough to get LSZ made!
It can be done by a skilled professional in a modern lab, but compared to the things on the RC market it is no joke. There's a reason we haven't seen any cocaine analogues, either.
The price will go down when someone invents a competing compound with similar efficacy. That could happen in a year for all we know -- why do you think they want to make money while they can?Last edited:Analysts on average expect Gilead's drug to generate sales of $1.73 billion in 2014, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Current standard treatments for genotype 1 often include a protease inhibitor. These are oral drugs that include Merck & Co Inc's Victrelis and Vertex Inc's Incivek.
Gilead acquired sofosbuvir, known as a nucleotide analogue inhibitor, with its $11 billion purchase of Pharmasset Inc in 2012.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/25/us-gilead-hepatitis-c-idUSBRE99O0XK20131025
they didn't analyze or do SHIT, they acquired a company and are proceeding in the cash raping, what am i missing here???
Maybe pharmasset deserves something, but they got 11 billion paid outright and apparently thought that was enough.
atara
Bluelighter
According to those numbers, they're only recouping a sixth of their initial investment. I can't accuse them iof profiteering if they've made negative nine billion dollars. So far, I've made more off sofosbuvir than Gilead has.well, bearing in mind that at a conservative estimate there are 250million people worldwide suffering from hepatitis C, if you even offered the treatment for 500USD and made an attempt to get at everyone, you'd make around 125,000,000,000$, which is many times their investment at a FRACTION of the cost at which this is being offered, surely the long run benefit for humanity and the fact you're still making ^ could be incentive to um, not just screw everyone who's suffering while you hold the patent? Even if you stagger it, offering it at 8000 in the US and developed nations and at a discount elsewhere, you could still EASILY recoup your investment and then some. Their projection of 1.73 billion is ludicrous, and probably based on very few people being able to actually afford the treatment! i don't understand why, if the cost to produce is so low, and the demand so high, one wouldn't want to produce additional returns for investors and researchers? it doesn't add up to me, once again, these are just thoughts, discussion would be appreciated.Last edited:endotropic
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2012
- Messages
- 1,140
It does seems like they're trying to milk every last cent out of it while they have it under patent. Maybe they'll try to increase the distribution near the end of the patent life, just cold blooded economics for now though.
On the plus side the limited distribution allows some more time for the results of longer term safety studies to come back.
Hammilton
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Sep 2, 2008
- Messages
- 3,435
Actually, you don't seem interested in the facts others have brought up. The cost to produce a new drug is extremely high.
Your econ education is very weak. Your model is based on everyone in the world with the condition being prescribed one drug and having the money to pay for it. A sizeable portion of the people you're talking about don't even know they're sick.
Despite what you've read, this is not a cheap drug to produce. There are competitors that are cheaper, but they're not 500 bucks, they're 50k per dosing regimen. This is more money, but for a reason. You don't like the reason, too bad.
Go ahead, find a Chinese or Indian chemist who'll ignore copyright. Shouldn't be hard. Let's see if you can Get one to synth it for less than 500 bucks per dose.Um, no, it actually IS cheap to produce, http://doctorsoftheworld.org/wp-con...ved-but-accessible-for-how-many-09DEC2013.pdf. Like 150 bucks for the treatment they're proposing charging people 76,000$ for. I'm not trying to be a jerk here, i'm just failing to see how this is defensible behavior for a company. and how it even makes sense, seriously, it seems like they could make way MORE by making it SLIGHTLY more accessible, like 10,000 a run - the price seems to inherently limit the availability, and if it's that cheap to make, why do that??
23536
Bluelight Crew
Companies set their prices based on what the market will pay. The way to offset this is not to guilt companies into altruism, but to unite all US patients into a single bargaining pool (USA being the world's most lucrative market by far). The company would be forced into lowering the price, otherwise they'd sell the drug to virtually nobody in the US.
sekio
Bluelight Crew
If you have the infrastructure set up... the average joe can't make a dose for $100 or he would be doing that instead of anything else. Like atara said this molecule is very complex. The only time it would be $100 a dose or around there is if the economy of scale kicked in and you were making multi-kilo quantities. By then you have spent $100,000 on a lab, staff to run it, and the reagents you need, and then only a few man-months of synthesis time.
You're also forgetting the regulatory costs of getting almost any new drug approved for sale are in the tens of thousands, to millions of dollars. You can make the active ingredient, sure, but then you need to find ways to package it so it stays good, and also distribute it securely to patients.
More light reading:
Curious Wavefunction: Why drugs are expensive: It’s the science, stupid.
Last edited:
atara
Bluelighter
Part of the point is that, if you actually read the study, you'll notice that *four* DAAs for HCV treatment were considered. Sofosbuvir is the first to market, but this has been an active line of research for quite some time. Several years ago the medical research community became aware that we were within a stone's throw of curing HCV, and many similar DAAs for HCV treatment are still in the drug pipeline. Sofosbuvir isn't a miracle compound, it's the first success of what will likely be many more HCV antivirals.
Nobody in medical research is surprised that this is happening. That's why all of these studies were done in the first place. Everything is goin, as it were, according to plan.
Gilead -- and all of the companies surrounding them -- knew that there was some chance that they would win, and some that they would lose. In order for it to make sense to take the risk there has to be a reward on the other side of the tunnel. See:
http://paulgraham.com/inequality.html
So it's not just recouping the cost -- but also the *risk* that was taken when the initial investment was made, long before sofosbuvir or its cousins became a reality. Remember, some drug companies poured billions into this project and walked away empty-handed.pizzystrizzy
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Apr 4, 2013
- Messages
- 91
This is true, although to keep things in perspective, the pharmaceutical industry as a whole spends more on marketing than on r&d...
what is criminal (assuming you meant that literally) about what they're doing?
please illustrate your work with examples.
alasdairMoredopamine
Bluelighter
I agree that the company who developed this drug is not to blame - they're free to charge $10000 a dose if they desire. Perhaps this is more of an issue of how we allocate resources on a public level, particularly the USA, and how that affects the price of treatment to the average Joe. Trying to argue for and against the rightness of the actions of a private corporation seems laughable at best.
To the OP, I'm sure other sources of the drug will sprout up if 1) the demand of the drug is that high and 2) it fits the cost benefit analysis of whatever 3rd party is (illegally) selling it.
