Sky-high life-saving medicines: A dose more than US$2 million

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Sky-high life-saving medicines: A dose more than US$2 million

Sky-high life-saving medicines: A dose more than US$2 million.  More than US$2 million per injection, and it takes no more than a year to survive, and the five-month-old baby receives the most expensive treatment in the world. 

“The cost of a bottle of medicine is only a few tens of dollars. Why does it cost hundreds of dollars to the patient?”

When it comes to the cost of medicines, many people always have complaints. Nowadays, cheap medicines are becoming less and less common, but the cost of seeing a doctor is getting higher and higher. Once you have cancer or rare diseases, the cost of medicines will be like a huge mountain. In the whole family.

1. A dose more than US$2 million, the British baby received the most expensive treatment in the world

The British media reported that a five-month-old baby was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy and received a 1.8 million pounds of treatment for more than 2 million US dollars. This news aroused heated discussion as soon as it came out.

The five-month-old baby is from South London. His parents named Arthur Morgan. One day, he suddenly found that Arthur could not sit upright and raised his head normally. He was rushed to the hospital for examination and was diagnosed with a rare spinal muscular atrophy. At that time, there were fewer than 60 cases of the disease globally, and half of the babies who also suffered from the disease lived less than a year.

Three weeks after the diagnosis, Arthur received Zolgensma’s pioneering gene therapy at the London Children’s Hospital in Everest. The drug used in this therapy was made in the United States. Through injection of the drug, the body can produce the lack of protein to help like Arthur. Such babies can regain their normal ability to sit, crawl, and walk. However, the drug is extremely expensive and is called an “orphan drug”. The reference price in the United States is $2.1 million.

Fortunately, the Arthur family received the help of British medical services and also received social fundraising. Arthur can successfully receive treatment. This also makes Arthur the first person in the UK to receive the most expensive drug treatment in the world.

2. Sky-high life-saving medicines：

1) Akirenzal injection: one shot or more than one million yuan

The drug is the first cell therapy product approved for marketing in China. It is mainly used to treat adult patients with relapsed and refractory large B-cell lymphoma after receiving second-line or above systemic treatment, including diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Type, high-grade B-cell lymphoma, primary mediastinal large B-cell lymphoma, and diffuse large B-cell lymphoma transformed from follicular lymphoma.

The online drug sales order for Achilles injection showed that the price was 1.2 million yuan per bag, and a bag of Achilles injection was about 68ml.

2)  Zokinvy: 1.03 million US dollars a year

Zokinvy is produced by Eiger Biopharmaceutical Company and approved for marketing in November 2020. It mainly targets Progeria Syndrome and Progeria-like Laminopathy. These two diseases are ultra-rare and inherited premature aging diseases that will accelerate the development of young patients. mortality rate.

Patients usually need to take 200mg of Zokinvy daily. If 50mg capsules are converted to US$717, the monthly cost of taking Zokinvy reaches US$86,040, and the annual cost is as high as US$1,032,480, which is about RMB 6.68 million.

3) Danyelza: USD 970,000 a year

Danyelza is a drug developed by New York Y-mAbs Pharmaceutical Company and approved for marketing in November 2020. It is suitable for pediatric patients with bone or bone marrow relapse or refractory high-risk neuroblastoma.

The price of Danyelza is US$20,368 per bottle, and patients usually need to take about 48 bottles a year, which means taking Danyelza every year will cost around US$977.64, which is about 6.33 million RMB.

4)  Myalept: USD 890,000 a year

Myalep is mainly for patients with systemic lipodystrophy and leptin deficiency caused by abnormal systemic fat distribution.

At the end of February this year, Myalep rose from US$71,306 per month by US$4 to US$74,159. It needs US$890,000 per year, or about RMB 5.76 million. Since Myalep is the only drug approved for marketing on the same target, and there are no other drugs in the late clinical stage for this disease, Myalep has become the only therapeutic drug for controlling this rare disease, so patients have very few options.

5) Luxturna: USD 850,000 a year

Inherited retinal dysfunction can cause vision loss or direct blindness. Luxturna is effective as a gene therapy for hereditary retinal dysfunction. However, Luxturna can only be used in hospitals and usually requires the help of a doctor to inject the drug directly into the eye. The price of each bottle of the drug is 425,000 U.S. dollars, and it is expected to cost 850,000 U.S. dollars a year, or about 5.5 million yuan.

3. Why is life-saving medicine so expensive?

Sickness is inherently sad, and it is even more difficult to accept expensive drugs after illness. Why are life-saving drugs so expensive?

The development of a drug often requires countless clinical trials. The process is extremely long, even taking decades, and up to 95% of new drugs will prove to be ineffective or unsafe in clinical trials. Entering the market for sales, so the development of new drugs is not smooth sailing! For example, “Gleevec” for the treatment of leukemia is the result of 41 years of hard work by scientists.

Pharmaceutical companies will also invest most of their funds in the development of new drugs. At this time, if the drugs are not sold at a high price, then the R&D costs of the drugs will not be earned during the patent protection period.

In addition to the cost of research and development, clinical trials of imported drugs will need to be repeated after they enter some countries. This process also requires capital investment, which will further increase the price of drugs.

In addition, drugs that have passed trials and successfully registered have to be entrusted to a third-party organization for clinical evaluation, and some drugs even need to be advertised and promoted. These behaviors will cause life-saving drugs to be terribly expensive.

(source:internet, reference only)

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Important Note: The information provided is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as medical advice.