Biotech and Antisense Technology

[B_part]

Originally posted by *\Conan/*: Mybe some of you here at IW know that I have a touch of psoriasis and would welcome something that would work besides mythotrexate. Yes, I took that for awhile and it cleared up my skin as long as I was on it. It really made my body go crazy thow. I don't feel as thow I am ready to try this Biogen to clear up from what I went through, and still feel sometimes, for a few red patches of dry skin. The sun seems to really help so i will stay will that for now.

Mytothrexate kills indiscriminately all the proliferating cells: it affects DNA synthesis, a process which occurs only in dividing cells and not in the terminally differentiated cells of your body. That's the reason why it is used in anti tumor treatments.

Psoriasis is thought to be caused by T-lymphocites attacking your skin cells. T-cells proliferate when activated against a threat (true or presumed), so methotrexate kills them. The problem is, proliferating cells are responsible for replacing your blood, producing gametes and other functions, which get disrupted by methotrexate. Hence the side effects.

According to biogen, amevive acts only on t cells. So that should reduce side effects, since the other cell types in your body should be unaffacted. The problem is, T cells proliferate whenever they sense a danger, and that also happens when the body gets infected by viruses and bacteria. So the side effects include "sore throat, dizziness, increased cough, nausea, itching, muscle aches, chills, injection site pain, injection site inflammation, and accidental injury.", because your immune system is messed up

Maybe you should talk to your doctor and see whether a "touch of psoriasis" is really worth this.

Sun is a great cure, though, and perhaps the best you can get with no, or few, side effects. And also some positive ones - hey dad i need to cure my psoriasis, give me money to go to the sea with my friends...

For a definitive cure which ails the ilness and doesn't only reduce the symptoms, you will need to wait further investigation on T cells activation pathways, which are far from understood, then further research on the drugs required to stop that process. BAsed on what I've learned in my immunology courses, you will have to wait a long time...

[ 06-25-2003, 09:42 AM: Message edited by: B_part ]

[*\Conan/*]

Thank you B-part! The baby boomers will be counting on you in the future!

Here is an article appropriate for the thread;

The Wrong Prescription for Pricing Drugs

_____Live Online_____

• Wednesday, 11 a.m. ET: Steven Pearlstein will be online to talk about prescription drug prices.




By Steven Pearlstein
Wednesday, June 25, 2003; Page E01


With money-making drugs finally on the market, potential blockbusters in the pipeline and stock prices soaring, the biotech industry is over at the convention center this week celebrating its long-awaited deliverance to the vital center of health care.

But for all the good news, a cursory review of the recent headlines suggests that there's big trouble brewing for biotech and its rich cousins in the pharmaceutical industry:

Supreme Court backs Maine's drug- pricing law. AstraZeneca cops a plea to conspiring with docs to bilk Medicaid. The government joins two whistle-blower suits against Merck-Medco alleging that it substituted its more expensive drugs for cheaper ones. Congress debates a law that pretends to make it legal to import lower-priced drugs from Canada and Mexico.

The common thread here is drug pricing, a highly secretive and cynical game being played with increasing sophistication by doctors, hospitals, drugmakers and pharmacy benefit managers. Unless the rules of the game are fixed, over time it is likely to either bankrupt the health care system or turn out such perverse results that we finally opt for a regime of innovation-stifling government price controls.

What makes drug prices such a black box is that (1) they have nothing to do with costs, (2) they are negotiated in strict secrecy, and (3) they depend largely on the buying clout of the health plan or country on the other side of the bargaining table.

The result is that for most drugs, there is no one price, but a wide range of prices, from the very low (for poor countries where the government negotiates on behalf of all of its citizens) to very high (what pharmacies charge Americans without insurance).

It is fashionable for American politicians to rant and rave about how drugs developed and manufactured in the United States are cheaper just across the border in Canada and Mexico. But this is not a problem. This kind of "price discrimination" is a good thing in terms of both economic efficiency and social outcomes, getting useful products to the largest number of people at the lowest overall cost. If drug companies were required to charge Americans the same as they charge Canadians, their profit-maximizing response would be to raise prices in Canada, which wouldn't do much for Grandma in Minneapolis.

On the hand, there are plenty of things we could do to make the market work more fairly and efficiently, starting with a requirement that drug companies dispense with their fictitious wholesale price lists and reveal the range of prices actually paid.

It is also absurd that those without insurance coverage -- generally a low-income group -- should pay the highest prices for drugs. The new Medicare bill solves that problem for seniors. For the other 40 million, there's no reason why every state shouldn't follow Maine's example and extend Medicaid's price list to them.

Maine also has a better idea in Democratic Rep. Tom Allen's proposal to authorize the National Institutes of Health to come up with scientific standards for analyzing the cost-effectiveness of new drugs -- an area now so open to varying assumptions and interpretations that any drug can be justified at just about any price.

The industry is fighting this tooth and nail behind the scenes, with good reason. They know that such standards will arm the government and health insurers with the objective criteria they now lack to refuse to pay for drugs like those little purple pills that deliver little or no extra benefit.

And in the case of truly breakthrough drugs, such research will establish an upper limit on what the rest of society is willing to pay to give an asthmatic the ability to walk a mile or to extend the life of terminal cancer patients for a year.

If that sounds like a backdoor form of rationing, so be it. However imperfect, it would be a far sight better than letting drug companies keep the upper hand in a marketplace where too often they can manipulate demand and dictate prices.

Steven Pearlstein will host a live online discussion at 11 a.m. today at washingtonpost.com. He can be reached at pearlsteins@washpost.com.