Photo courtesy of FDA
AMSTERDAM—New research suggests some generic cancer drugs could be manufactured for less than 1% of the prices currently charged in the US and UK.
For example, researchers calculated that manufacturing a 400 mg tablet of imatinib costs $0.92.
Charging $1.04 per tablet would cover costs and allow for a 10% profit margin.
However, the current price of imatinib is $84.36 per tablet in the UK and $247.74 per tablet in the US.
Melissa Barber, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the UK, reported these findings at ECCO 2017: European Cancer Congress (abstract 1032).
Barber and her colleagues collected data on per-kilogram costs of exported active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) from an online database of Indian export logs.
The team then estimated generic prices for tablets through an established costing algorithm. They calculated per-dose API costs and added excipient costs of $2.63 per kg of finished pharmaceutical product and per-tablet costs of production of $0.01, plus a 10% profit margin accounting for a 26.6% average tax on profits (assuming manufacture in India.)
Finally, the researchers compared the calculated price to current unit prices in the US, UK, Spain, and India.
For imatinib, the team determined the cost of the API to be $2284 per kg and the API cost per tablet to be $0.91. They then added excipient cost ($0.002 per tablet), conversion cost ($0.01 per tablet), and a 10% profit margin accounting for a 26.6% tax on profits.
This resulted in the estimated generic price of $1.04 per tablet. The per-tablet price is below the estimated price in India ($0.22) but much higher than the estimated price in Spain ($57.53), the UK ($84.36), and the US ($247.74).
Barber noted that, according to her group’s calculations, imatinib could be produced for $54 a month.
Another drug that could be produced for a low cost is etoposide. Barber and her colleagues calculated a generic price for etoposide of $0.97 per 100 mg tablet.
However, the per-tablet price is $1.50 in India, $8.65 in Spain, $11.34 in the UK, and $87.14 in the US.
The researchers calculated a generic price for mercaptopurine of $0.03 per 50 mg tablet, which is the same as the per-tablet price in India. However, a 50 mg mercaptopurine tablet costs $3.14 in Spain, $2.56 in the UK, and $0.40 in the US.
“Showing that certain cancers could be treated for very low prices could transform the future of people with these cancers in very low-income countries where there are usually few or no treatment options,” Barber said.
