Source: Herald Sun – Sue Dunlevy. Photo: Jim Trifyllis.
An Australian drug company chief has made the astounding vow he’ll deliver a breakthrough new cancer drug at a price families can afford.
Big pharmaceutical companies claim you can’t develop a breakthrough cancer treatment for less than $1.5 billion but Novogen chief Graham Kelly, who is using his own experimental cancer medicine on himself to beat his aggressive prostate cancer, accuses them of “obscene” price gouging.
He says it will cost just $50 million to take his new anti-cancer drug from the test tube to the clinic. Big drug companies are charging thousands of dollars for some medicines that cost between $5-$20 to manufacture and package, he says.
“It is one of the closely guarded secrets of the industry,” Mr Kelly said.
And he believes many breakthrough new cancer medicines which have huge price tags over $100,000 deliver only an extra 6-10 months of life.
The price of drugs is based on what the market can bear rather than what is a fair price,” he told News Corp Australia.
“The way we are going the Federal Government will soon say we can’t afford these medicines.
“We believe innovative medicine can be developed without the obscene price tags that make families mortgage their homes or strain federal health budgets.”
Novogen has developed a world first drug technology designed to selectively kill cancer stem cells without the side effects associated with existing chemotherapy.
The drug is set to be trialled on children with neuroblastoma, women with ovarian cancer, men with prostate cancer and melanoma patients in 2015.
The company believes if it is successful it should eventually be able to be used in all types of cancer…read the full story.
