Derek Lowe's commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry. An editorially independent blog from the publishers of Science Translational Medicine. All content is Derek’s own, and he does not in any way speak for his employer.
I find myself slammed with a busy work schedule this week, but I have to take a moment to recommend this post by venture capitalist Bruce Booth on drug pricing. It is long, detailed, and comprehensive, and I’m very glad that he took the time to do it, because it (and Jack Scannell’s piece from… Read More
So now we have another couple of twists in the Catalyst/Jacobus story (for background see these earlier posts). Jacobus, now that their version of amifampridine (3,4-diaminopyridine) has been approved by the FDA, has announced their price for the drug. And it’s definitely not the price they had before, which was free to the few people… Read More
There have been several hearings in Washington on the drug industry and drug prices, and there are going to be more. Drug pricing is a large and messy issue, for sure, and all I’ll say about it today is to ask everyone to read Jack Scannell on it before expressing an opinion. I’m not going… Read More
Here’s a proposal from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to have the government manufacture generic drugs directly. (I was traveling yesterday and wasn’t able to blog this then). It’s clear that there are some problems with parts of the generic drug system that we have, so my first thoughts were (1) whether Warren saw the same problems… Read More
Back in 2013 and again in 2016, I wrote about Catalyst Pharmaceuticals, a South Florida company whose business plan I found repellant. That’s because said plan involved running an old generic compound (3,4-diaminopyridine) through the FDA modern approval process, which under the agency’s rules would grant them market exclusivity. I have… Read More
Unfortunately, we have another example of “price of ancient generic drug shoots through roof”. Whenever this happens, the first thing to look at is the regulatory environment. After that you can go on about the greed of the company and its executives, the stupidity of the insurance companies, all the usual stuff, and you won’t… Read More
I’ve had numerous requests for my opinion about this article, so here it comes: it’s largely bullshit. It’s about “a volunteer network of anarchists and hackers developing DIY medical technologies”, and I can see why Vice.com is running the article, because that drugs/anarchists/hackers combo is absolute catnip to thei… Read More
It’s been a while since we talked about drug reimportation here, but it’s been back in the news recently. Drug prices are, naturally, of economic, medical, and political importance, and the administration has been making a great deal of noise about lowering them. To that end, HHS Secretary Alex Azar has announced the formation of a… Read More
There’s been an interesting discussion about pharma R&D productivity and drug pricing on Twitter the last few days – here’s the starting point, from John Tucker. His thesis is that the hefty rate of inflation for medical services/hospitalization, where the data seem alarmingly solid, is one of the things driving the problem. T… Read More
I’m still trying to get my bearings with this new paper from the Cronin group at Glasgow. What it proposes is a new style of API (active pharmaceutical ingredient) production. Instead of being done in bench- or process-scale lab glassware or in production-plant reactors, these syntheses take place in 3D-printed reactors, connected together in… Read More
