New MS Drug Ocrevus Wins FDA Approval

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MS

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A monkey scrotum?

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$26 Billion dollars for the kids keeping count at home.

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Probably not as great as a payout after research costs. But companies need to get paid off to keep investing in wonderful drugs to help quality of life.

Is it progress or just "another drug" ending in "mab"?

If it benefits, great? But those mess have sit tons of side effects. Is this just another more costly version of the same thing?

I've not read enough on this so I am actually asking.

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Is it progress or just "another drug" ending in "mab"?

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Do you know for what "mab" stands? Just another mab? What the frick?

An interesting thing about this drug is that there is already a monoclonal antibody called rituximab that targets the same receptor, CD20 (a protein on immune cells). The difference is that ocrevus is a humanized antibody while rituximab is a mouse/human chimeric antibody. How much difference that makes, I don't know as I'm not an antibody expert. I do know that ocrelizumab will have patent protection longer, potentially explaining the push to have it approved.

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That's a hell of a market cap... Roche thinks their drug is worth $26 Billion dollars for the kids keeping count at home.

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Roche is the leader in the medical field putting profits back into R&D. 20%.

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Drug pricing is ridiculous

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It is. But to be totally fair, they just mapped out a genetically engineered antibody that will specifically target the smallest amount of things in your body to prevent the disease from worsening while minimizing its effects.


Generally speaking, the more that something is like our body, the harder it is to fix with a medicine, because then the medicine targets things similar to our body. Bacteria? That's easy. They work way differently than our bodies. That's why penicillin isn't particularly toxic to the human body, comparatively speaking. Here you've got an autoimmune disorder. That is, your body attacks itself. Now you have to have a drug that targets part of your body that's gone rogue (with no clear reason why) with the most limited spectrum possible. To do that is quite difficult. And it's a small target population. Those things combined make this really prone to high cost.

But what is this better than? This is better than drugs that totally wipe out the immune system. Those will also alleviate MS symptoms but come with the risk of your body, well, having basically no/limited immune system. The reward is now well worth the risk for treating.


But it's so expensive. The more of these drugs that are able to be made, the more we learn about the process of monoclonal antibody production. It's a wildly expensive process, but? the end-results, price aside, are phenomenal and are truly changing healthcare. This isn't a company taking a naturally occurring large protein/hormone/etc and mass producing it.


Could they sell it for cheaper? Probably. Is there a patient assistance program? Almost definitely. One thing that is often overlooked is these companies' assistance programs. They absolutely make profits, and big ones. But most of them are actually pretty good about bending over to make sure that people who would benefit can get what they need. It's not a convenient process, but it's out there.




No, I am not in any way affiliated with any pharmaceutical company or product, though I have accepted lunch from them.

Just slather peppermint essential oil on your forehead. The oils cure all.

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and will cost $65,000

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The pharmaceutical sales rep whores are getting their panties wet in hopes of peddling this.