Commentary.. Is this What Melanoma Patients are going to foresee in the future with Ipilimumab from BMS?Melanoma..Jim Breitfeller

Commentary.. Is this What Melanoma Patients are going to foresee in the future with Ipilimumab from BMS?

As one can see GREED has been taken to the next level. I am astounded that BMS will not Help, when their help is needed. Where are their ETHICS?????


In a letter to BMS’ CEO Lamberto Andreotti dated July 9, 2010, Controller Chiang states:

"California’s AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), like ADAPs across the nation, is in jeopardy as California’s budget continues to suffer the ravages of the recent recession. As available state general fund dollars continue to shrink, demand on the program has grown faster than normal (another byproduct of the recession) and the cost of drugs has been increasing.
"This is an unsustainable situation. California has no interest in depriving people with HIV/AIDS of drugs that keep them alive, so the only available recourse is to rein in the growing drugs costs. On balance, it seems that all parties should do their part to ease the pain this recession has inflicted on ADAP."

In order to help alleviate the crisis, other major AIDS drug manufacturers have agreed to significant reductions in the pricing of their lifesaving AIDS medications to ADAPs, including Merck and Company, Johnson & Johnson’s Tibotec Therapeutics, Gilead Sciences Inc., Viiv Healthcare and Abbott Labs. But not BMS. Meanwhile, twelve states have instituted waiting lists. And the number of people waiting to access medicines continues to balloon. In Florida, the waiting list is increasing at a rate of 250 to 300 people per month.

Adds Chiang: “Ultimately, modest changes from drug companies are all that is needed to help ensure ADAPs can continue to serve the people who need them. It is time for BMS to step up and join the other pharmaceutical companies that have found ways to reduce the cost of drugs to California and its ADAP program.”

“AHF would like to thank Controller Chiang for expressing his concerns over the pricing of BMS’ Reyataz and for urging the drug giant to do its part to ensure that patients in need of lifesaving AIDS medicines are being served,” said Michael Weinstein, AIDS Healthcare Foundation President. “AHF believes there is simply no justification for BMS to price Reyataz $3,000 to $5,400 more than other first-line AIDS drugs. The price of this drug is putting an unbearable strain on taxpayer funded, cash strapped State AIDS Drug Assistance Programs in California and around the country, ultimately limiting access to lifesaving HIV/AIDS treatment to those most in need.”

To read the letter sent by Controller Chiang to BMS, click HERE

http://www.aidshealth.org/news/publications/chiang-to-bms-7-9-10.pdf

Background on the Pricing and Impact of BMS’ Reyataz

Since it was first approved by the FDA in 2003, BMS has increased the price of Reyataz by over 25%. Today, the Average Wholesale Price (AWP) of Reyataz (atazanavir) stands at $13,046 per-year. AHF officials note Reyataz must be taken with at least two other HIV/AIDS drugs as part of an effective antiretroviral treatment regimen.

AHF has seen firsthand the impact of high priced AIDS drug like Reyataz. In California, for example, since 2000 the number of new ADAP clients has only increased by 50%, but AIDS drug spending has increased by 165%. The price of Reyataz and other drugs is a major contributing factor to this increase.

Across the country, states have been forced to make cuts to ADAP services and enrollment because of high cost AIDS drugs like Reyataz. States can no longer afford to provide treatment to many of their current ADAP clients, and as costs increase more people will be put at risk of losing access to services. Ultimately, this means that the more people who go on high-priced drugs like Reyataz, the fewer who can receive lifesaving services.

AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and services to more than 139,000 individuals in 23 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean the Asia/Pacific region and Eastern Europe.

http://www.aidshealth.org/

Source: http://www.advfn.com/news_CA-Controller-Chiang-Urges-BMS-to-Cut-Price-of-AIDS-Drug-Reyataz-says-AHF_43763325.html

As I see it, The Melanoma Patients could be next in line.

Q2 Conference Call July 2010 from Bristol Myer Squibb

Operator

We'll go next to Seamus Fernandez with Leerink Swann.
Seamus Fernandez - Leerink Swann LLC

Just a couple of questions on ipilimumab actually. Can you just discuss the kind of strategy that you might be evaluating relative to -- assuming that the frontline study is successful, the strategies in terms of pricing that you're thinking about relative to the differential in the 3-milligram per kilogram dosing versus the 10-milligram per kilogram dosing that you have for second-line versus first-line and how you can deal with that commercially? And then secondly, could you just, Elliott, clarify for us the maintenance paradigm in the IPI 024, the frontline study, versus the retreatment paradigm in the 020 study? I think there might be a little bit of confusion out there. I think it would help to clarify that.

Lamberto Andreotti

Than means I would start, and I will ask Beatrice to follow. Obviously, pricing of IPI is natural very important to us. We have initiated that review of the different options we have. And for obvious reasons, we will not disclose much in terms of prices until we are closer to the market. There is a -- this is really a different situation from what we experienced in the past with other oncology products because of the emerging profile of these products. So we don't want to exclude any possible new approaches to pricing, and we will discuss more about this when we launch. But Beatrice, why don't you speak a little bit more about the opportunity that we see for IPI?

Beatrice Cazala

As you know, this is a working science and new, so we don't really have a comparator into most standard of care because many investigational agent are used in that segment. So it creates a new set of challenges for us on pricing, I think if you outline some of them with a three and a 10, you will find interesting and new approach to solve that. The number of case is 30,000 to 40,000 annually in the U.S. and EU, and 60,000 worldwide. And we also know from, and Elliott will comment more about the schedule and dilution, but we also know in the surrounding setting that most of the patient will be treated with a number of dose and that would be it. So it creates an interesting situation for pricing and we're, clearly, today working very hard on nonstop therapy pricing in our overall share to be determining the optimal pricing for the products and to satisfy the multiple stakeholders and the access around markets when we introduce it. So interesting challenges, not on insufferable secondhand setting with a definite, it's a definite market. As you know, some of our patients also know it's a semi-treatment in most patients. So those are along the line of what we are working on today.

Elliott Sigal

So with regard to the maintenance schedules or the terminology of induction, re-induction and maintenance, in 020, there was no maintenance per se. There was induction and based on physician evaluation, a possible re-induction. The induction is an infusion, in this case, the three milligram dose, every three weeks for four complete doses. Now if a patient did respond, and these are patients that are pre-treated for which there's no approved drug and it is a fatal disease. If they did show some benefit after that induction and then later, seem to deteriorate, they could be reinduced. The 024 was a different trial, there is an approved drug DTIC and we ran ipilimumab on top of that backbone. To see if we could improve against the standard care and first-line metastatic melanoma and the protocol for that was at 10 milligrams. It was the same four doses in the induction every three weeks, and then there was a maintenance every three months.







Bristol Myer Slogan:

"What sets us apart? We believe it's our commitment to patients with serious diseases, our focus on finding innovative medicines that combat those diseases, and our dedication to extending and enhancing human life."

So we can deplete your life savings for the good of the company and line our pockets!!!!



“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

~Charles Darwin~

Take Care,
Jimmy B