The cheaper drug, bevacizumab, should be referred to NICE

doi:10.1136/bmj.39128.708565.3A

BMJ 2007;334:381-382 (24 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.39128.708565.3A

Letters

Ranibizumab and bevacizumab

The cheaper drug, bevacizumab, should be referred to NICE

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We think that Chakravarthy and Lim could have said more aboutthe pricing of ranibizumab and bevacizumab.¹ Both drugs areowned by a single company, Roche/Genentech, which has no intentionof licensing the cheaper. The US price of ranibizumab is $1950or roughly £1000 per injection. Monthly injections wouldcost £12 000 per patient. Bevacizumab, which is licensedfor cancer treatment, could cost as little as £17 perinjection, as the dosages used for eyes are minute comparedwith cancer. In the US, off-licence bevacizumab is estimatedto cost $17-50 (£8-25) including the costs of splittingup the larger cancer doses. By refusing to license bevacizumabfor macular degeneration, Roche/Genentech is raising the priceby an unprecedented factor of over 50.

Given the lack of data directly comparing these two drugs, wesupport the call for a head to head trial (indeed we are partof a team bidding to . . . [Full text of this article]

James P Raftery, professor of health technology assessment¹, Andrew Lotery, professor of ophthalmology²

¹ University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1SG, ² Southampton Eye Unit, Southampton General Hospital, Southampton SO16 6YD

raftery@soton.ac.uk

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New treatments for neovascular acute macular degeneration: Usha Chakravarthy and Jennifer I Lim
BMJ 2007 334: 269-270. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]