NutritionThe Dawn Of A New Era In Cancer Treatment
A new article in Scrip World Pharmaceutical News highlights enormous change in cancer medicine with highly personalised treatments, patient top-up payments in some markets, response-related payments and even refunds when there is no response to a treatment, all driving the future of cancer care worldwide.
The article - written by Karol Sikora, professor of cancer medicine at Imperial College, London - cites an increasingly informed and consumerist society as one of the key drivers in this critical and evolving competitive marketplace.
"Denying the existence of innovative drugs is no longer acceptable to democracies where patients can access all the information they require. The internet is a great equaliser," explains Professor Sikora. "Patient knowledge and understanding in terms of what is available has led to the growing use of top-up payments to break access barriers to innovative cancer drugs."
"An ethically-driven top-up system is the only sustainable solution for the current challenge of cancer care and carries the best chance of sustaining a high-quality core service for all," adds Professor Sikora. "It could drive a new, patient-led, competitive marketplace which will create greater efficiency throughout cancer care."
At the same time - as in other therapy areas - cancer treatments will become much more personalised. "The days of marketing cancer drugs like a supermarket commodity are over," continues Professor Sikora. "This is the dawn of a new era of rational cancer drug use, where oncologists avidly seek logical ways to get the right drug to the right patient thanks to a personalised diagnostics programme."
"All of this means that investment now - in diagnostics, new technologies, new delivery systems and, of course, in new drugs - is vital if pharma companies are to avoid financial meltdown and the tragedy of efficacious drugs falling by the wayside because organisations like the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) turn them down due to lack of companion diagnostics."
"Within 20 years, cancer will be a chronic disease, joining conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and asthma. These conditions impact on the way people live and do not inexorably lead to death. The model of prostate cancer, where many men die with it rather than from it, will be common for most cancers. The greatest progress will be made in understanding the myriad causes of cancer, leading to new prevention strategies for which scientific advances will be able to provide effective risk reduction."
Scrip World Pharmaceutical News