“Now, he’s arguing that the law’s new Medicare negotiation program could encourage Genentech to slow-walk research on how a drug could treat diseases with smaller populations in favor of making sure diseases with larger patient populations are the first to market. That would mean the company would sell more medicines in the window before Medicare is allowed to negotiate prices, because the clock for when discounts can kick in is based off of when the drug first goes on the market.
Speaking about an experimental therapy in the works that could treat ovarian cancer, breast cancer, and prostate cancer, he said, “Normally, we would develop it in a fast market approach for ovarian cancer. That’s the shortest path to patients … but that is a much smaller indication than prostate cancer, which would take three years longer.”
“So the dilemma we’re facing right now is, do we go with the initial indication being prostate cancer and then hold off on the development and the approval [for] ovarian [cancer] because the clock will be started with prostate?””
