Value For the Money

BioCentury always does a big issue for the fall, entitled "Back to School". They often use this as a state-of-biopharma platform, going into depth on what they see as the biggest issues that need to be addressed. This year, the September 2 issue, they're telling people (and not for the first time!) to get braced for higher standards for what health insurance is going to pay for: Drug companies must start creating the case for value differentiation in discovery and then steadily build a body of evidence throughout the product development process. Some drug developers have figured this out and have reshaped both their pipelines and development practices accordingly. But the number of me-too and purportedly me-better products still in the pipeline — coupled with the fact that drugs are still getting to Phase III and beyond without comparisons to relevant SOC (standard of care) or data on quality of life and other metrics that patients value — shows efforts in this department are still wanting. For example, BioCentury’s BCIQ online database shows 54 compounds in active development that target VEGF or its receptors, not counting line extensions of approved VEGF and VEGF receptor inhibitors. Even accounting for different variants of the receptor and its ligand and differences in delivery, formulation and dosing, it is highly unlikely that so many compounds could be differentiated sufficiently that physicians and patients would strongly prefer them to marketed alternatives...
Source: In the Pipeline - Category: Chemists Tags: Drug Prices Source Type: blogs