The ranibizumab saga of drug profiteering

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1532

Published 3 September 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1532
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1532

Letters

Drug prices

The ranibizumab saga of drug profiteering

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

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE)recently sanctioned the use of ranibizumab for age related maculardegeneration, having originally concluded it would be cost effectiveonly if limited to treating one eye, which could jeopardisefunctional vision.¹ ² The exorbitant price charged by the drug’smanufacturer has been overlooked: widespread use could costover £300m and up to 1% of the NHS budget.³

Bevacizumab is closely related to ranibizumab and likely tohave similar clinical efficacy and side effect profiles. Severalstudies have supported its effectiveness and reported no shortterm safety concerns.⁴ It is an internationally recognised treatmentfor age related macular degeneration, and used worldwide, costingaround £100 per injection compared with £761 forranibizumab.⁵

NICE cannot consider bevacizumab as it can only assess drugsfor their licensed purpose. But why is it not licensed for intraocularuse? Roche/Genentech manufactures both drugs and is reluctantto . . . [Full text of this article]

Andrew C K Lee, clinical lecturer in public health¹, John Radford, director of public health²

¹ School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S1 4DA, ² Rotherham Primary Care Trust, Rotherham S66 1YY

andrew.lee@sheffield.ac.uk