Nature Reviews states that a global revolution in new cancer drug pricing must occur

A major new study published this week in Nature Reviews states that a global revolution in new cancer drug pricing must occur if the world is to cope with rapidly increasing instances of the disease.

The paper, titled ‘Sustainability and affordability of cancer drugs: a novel pricing model’ and written by Professor Carin Uyl-de Groot and Professor Bob Lӧwenberg from Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands, proposes an algorithm that should be used to determine innovative drug prices with ‘a maximum level of transparency’.

The algorithm would take into account the actual costs of R&D, manufacturing, sales, marketing and a fair profit margin based on the clinical benefit to arrive at a reasonable price for each anticancer drug.

As an example, the algorithm recommends a price of $3,094 for each treatment of the anti-prostate cancer drug enzalutamide, despite the current market price being almost 12 times that figure in the UK ($36,288) and more than 28 times higher in the US ($88,704).