> But Revlimid is also, I soon learned, extraordinarily expensive, costing nearly $1,000 for each daily pill.<p>Thanks to the bargaining power of my nationalised healthcare, my government pays around 1/5th of that, and I'll pay nothing myself.<p>Revlamid is listed under it's generic name Lenalidomide, price is in pence: <a href="https://www.drugtariff.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/#/00791628-DD/DD00791454/Part%20VIIIA%20products%20L" rel="nofollow">https://www.drugtariff.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/#/00791628-DD/DD0079145...</a>
My wife’s company developed a multiple myeloma immunotherapy that is for people that have had previous treatments of other drugs but then go into remission.<p>It works so well that their efficacy reports have caveats like “not enough patients that were treated have died yet” to provide meaningful statistics.<p>The drug was initially developed in china. They presented results at a conference in the USA but no one believed them other than a skeptical Pfizer who sent a big team to china to confirm the data. Pfizer soon invested billions into the company and drug to bring it to market.<p>The drug’s sales are on track to be $1 billion this year but the stock is heavily depressed because of the china connection.
Remember the time that Florida fought the federal government for access to socialized medicine?<p><a href="https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2024/florida-becomes-first-nation-have-canadian-drug-importation-program-approved-fda" rel="nofollow">https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2024/florida-becomes-fi...</a><p>> "Today, the DeSantis administration received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of its Canadian Prescription Drug Importation Program. The Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) submitted this first-of-its-kind plan to safely import cheaper drugs from Canada to the FDA nearly 37 months ago, and after filing a lawsuit against the FDA due to delays, has finally received approval. This approval will save Florida up to $180 million in the first year."
Crazy how they managed to restrict the competing researchers from obtaining the drug.<p>How did they do that?<p>Why is the sale of a super expensive drug used exclusively to treat a super specific type of cancer even controlled in the first place? What is even the argument?<p>I couldn't think of any argument before. After reading, I can only think of "to restrict competition".
There is some light at the end of the tunnel. I suppose the patent runs out early next year, as the drug was released in 2005 and the generic which is already available but volume limited also has that volume limitation until January 31, 2026. The press release formulates this as if Celgene did this out of graciousness but I suppose it's just that the government granted monopoly ends.<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220811173542/https://ir.celgene.com/press-releases-archive/press-release-details/2019/Celgene-Settles-US-REVLIMID-Patent-Litigation-with-Alvogen/default.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20220811173542/https://ir.celgen...</a><p>> Celgene has agreed to provide Alvogen with a license to Celgene’s patents required to manufacture and sell an unlimited quantity of generic lenalidomide in the United States beginning no earlier than January 31, 2026.
> <i>But Revlimid is also, I soon learned, extraordinarily expensive, costing nearly $1,000 for each daily pill. (Although, I later discovered, a capsule costs just 25 cents to make.)</i><p>That daily pill is 25mg. You can buy 5g of Revlimid's active ingredient for $352.<p>> <a href="https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/aldrich/901558" rel="nofollow">https://www.sigmaaldrich.com/US/en/product/aldrich/901558</a><p>200 doses at less than $2/ea.<p>If you want to get adventurous, you can probably buy 1kg from China or India for $900. Find a university or commercial lab with HPLC and LC/MS and run your own QC for a few hundred bucks. Store the powder in a vacuum-sealed container in a refrigerator. You're set for life.<p>I've done this sort of thing before, and <i>a lot</i> of people are doing it for GLP agonist drugs. (To say nothing of sports doping, nootropics, etc.)<p>Sometimes you've gotta take matters into your own hands.
It makes me wonder, is there a way to get this drug from a Chinese or Indian lab? I'm sure there are severe legal repercussions, but purely theoretically. It reminds me of the film The Dallas Buyers' Club