Cancer Doctor Leading the Attack on Astronomical Drug Prices

Re:Cancer Doctor Leading the Attack on Astronomical Drug Prices by robbiep on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @03:43AM (#9651121)

Because these drugs are mostly monoclonal antibodies, you have to actually develop your own. You can work out what the target is, but because the antibody has extremely high specificity for a specific target, and is high molecular weight, you can't just synthesise it, you need to grow it (An absolutely fascinating process in and of itself)

There have been examples of other drug companies targeting the same target as an existing high value monoclonal antibody drug, however I am aware of at least one example where the 'knockoff' monoclonal antibody actually had harmful effects compared with the original.

The only way you can actually copy the drug is to steal a cell from their lineage and produce your own

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Re:Cancer Doctor Leading the Attack on Astronomical Drug Prices by drjohnkasanders on Wednesday June 03, 2015 @09:39AM (#9652410)

I am interested to learn about the case with the knockoff having harmful effects. Could you guide me in the right direction?

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Re:Cancer Doctor Leading the Attack on Astronomical Drug Prices by robbiep on Thursday June 04, 2015 @03:20AM (#9657816)

Off the top of my head it was a VEGF antagonist, so avastin knockoff. I'll try dig up the paper when I'm off mobile

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Re:Cancer Doctor Leading the Attack on Astronomical Drug Prices by robbiep on Thursday June 04, 2015 @04:53AM (#9658114)

So I have just spent about half an hour looking.

I honestly can't remember where this knowledge comes from. My feeling is i learned it on my oncology term 12 months ago. It may have even been a ipilimumab biosimilar. Unfortunately google is mostly saturated with success stories and papers relating to monoclonal antibodies and wherever I heard about the writeup of the failure has vanished into the nether-regions of google.

Apologies. If anything comes up, put a contact email in your details and i'll reach out to you.

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