By: Annabelle Ma

The U.S. faces a shortage of cheap generic cancer drugs like cisplatin and carboplatin, which help treat as many as 500,000 new cancer cases each year. Now, doctors all over the U.S. have been struggling with treating bladder, ovarian, lung, and many other cancers.

The main cause of this shortage is the generic drugs’ relative lack of profitability.

President Biden has been focused on Cancer Moonshot, an initiative to discover expensive and rare cures to treat aggressive cancers. But there has been a shortage of cheap drugs like cisplatin, which costs as little as $6 a dose.

“It’s just a travesty that this is the level of health care in the United States of America right now,” said Dr. Stephen Divers, an oncologist in Hot Springs, Ark.

Isabella McDonald, a junior at Utah Valley University, was diagnosed with a fatal bone cancer that can only be treated with methotrexate. But due to the recent shortage she hasn’t been able to take her full dose.

According to research conducted by Anthony Sardella, the average net price of generic drugs fell by more than half between 2016 and 2022. This caused many pharmaceutical companies to stop selling cheap generics.

For example, Akorn, a company that produces 75 common generics, went bankrupt in February. And Teva, a producer of 3,600 drugs, announced that the company would be shifting to “high-value generics” to earn more money. Officials at Fresenius Kabi and Pfizer have increased their production of carboplatin, but it isn’t enough to end the shortage.

Prices for carboplatin, cisplatin, and other drugs have skyrocketed recently. A 600-milligram bottle of carboplatin, normally available for $30, was $185 in early May and $345 a week after that.

“At a certain point the system needs to recognize there’s a high cost to low-cost drugs,” said Allan Coukell, senior vice president for public policy at Civica Rx, a company that provides 80 drugs to hospitals.

Dr. Mark Ratain, a pharmacologist at the University of Chicago, compares the drug shortage to the OPEC oil crisis. He thinks that if we sell a quarter-million barrels of oil, we should be able to earn enough money to buy two years’ worth of carboplatin and cisplatin.

Source: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2023-06-21/drugmakers-are-abandoning-cheap-generics-and-now-u-s-cancer-patients-cant-get-meds