Removing the blindfold on medicines pricing

摘要

Tisagenlecleucel (Kymriah), one of several promising chimeric antigen receptor T cell (CAR-T) therapies, is the first gene therapy to get US approval. Novartis announced in September 2017 that the leukaemia treatment would cost $475 000 (￡340 000)-double the median house price in the US, or 60 years of mortgage payments for the average family. Medicines pricing debates have run the same, stale course for decades: on one side is the need to ensure access to lifesaving medicines; on the other, the importance of rewarding risky, costly research and development. Unsurprisingly, industry's estimates of the cost of developing medicines-albeit hotly contested-have ballooned every few years. More surprisingly, society has been participating blindfolded in this debate.