An Economics Perspective on Drug Prices: Audrey Laporte (University of Toronto)
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Transcript of An Economics Perspective on Drug Prices: Audrey Laporte (University of Toronto)
An Economics Perspec.ve on Drug Prices
Audrey Laporte, PhD Ins4tute of Health Policy Management and Evalua4on
University of Toronto and
Brian S. Ferguson, PhD Department of Economics
University of Guelph
Outline-‐key ideas
q Drug development should be thought of as investment in an asset
q Investment in an asset will only take place if the stream of revenue jus4fies the cost of the investment
q General issues in terms of defining the stream of revenue from drug R&D
q What are the issues that arise in the case of small market drugs if we want to ensure that research will be done into rare diseases?
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q Of 100 drugs that make it to trials only about 10 will make it to market:
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All indica4ons (2013) Phase success Phase LOA Phase 1 to Phase 2 64.50% 10.40% Phase 2 to Phase 3 32.40% 16.20% Phase 3 to NDA/BLA 60.10% 50.00% NDA/BLA to Approval 83.20% 83.20%
LOA from Phase 1 10.40% From Table 3 Hay et al. (2014)
q Pfizer tried to find successor to Lipitor its blockbuster drug in the cholesterol market.
q Tried 10 years ago to develop a drug that built up the good cholesterol and had to shelve it.
q More recently, tried to develop a drug that moved the bad cholesterol out of the body faster–had planned a set of Phase III trials on 17,000 pa4ents –plans for which were recently halted.
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Tend to talk about ‘THE’ price of a drug
q Price is a more nuanced concept than is oaen recognized. q Important dis4nc4on: DEMAND price, the SUPPLY price and the MARKET price, when not in a perfectly compe44ve market context:
q DEMAND price represents in some sense the value of the drug
q SUPPLY price reflects the opportunity cost of producing the drug
q MARKET (actual) price will in most cases be somewhere in between
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Stream of payments from R&D capital investment
q Don’t want to pay above the DEMAND price
q If the price is below the SUPPLY price the drug won’t come on the market
q Pricing pharmaceu4cals relates to crea4ng a stream of payment based on the products that come out of investment in research
q Drugs are the outcome of spending on research capital q Focus here on the supply side of the pricing issue: How to design a stream of payments which will ensure that the product of the research enterprise actually comes on the market?
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Crea.ng a payment stream q Similar to the one the federal government was tackling in the recent fiscal update • Designing an infrastructure bank to bring public-‐private money together for investment in physical infrastructure • Need to ensure stream of returns from the physical infrastructure which is sufficient to persuade private agents including pension funds to invest in infrastructure bank, e.g. road tolls.
q For a large market drug crea4ng a payment stream is rela4vely straighiorward • The cost of the research enterprise will be spread over a large number of individual pa4ents during the post-‐approval patent life of the drug
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Small market drugs
q For small market (rare disease) drugs: s4ll need to design a payment structure which will make it ajrac4ve for drug companies to invest in R&D of small market drugs and not pay above the demand price.
q Costs of developing small market drugs can be expected to be every bit as high as the cost of developing large market drugs
q Given the same post-‐approval patent life of brand name drugs in which to recover those costs –effec4vely spreading this cost over a smaller popula4on
q Cost per pa4ent for will thus tend to be higher.
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Developer of small market (rare disease) drug
q Soricimed Biopharma Inc., Sackville NB, Mount Allison University-‐in process of developing cancer drug derived from the saliva of a shrew.
q Just been granted rare disease classifica4on by FDA for two types of cancer—pancrea4c and ovarian—only gone through Phase I trials.
q Need funding for Phase II & Phase III trials—and when need outside funding the issues are more clear than when funding for Trial Phases has to come from retained earnings.
q Company CEO noted that it can be difficult to iden4fy a stream of revenue that can be expected to cover the $100 million Phase II trial to cost.
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Rare drug designa.on-‐market exclusivity
q Since 1983 FDA gran4ng rare drug designa4on to drugs mee4ng certain criteria. q Guarantees period of market exclusivity q S4ll 4es the ROI to a fixed 4me period and to a small popula4on. q Odds are s4ll need to set a high price per pill on the drug. q When market exclusivity ends-‐ generic compe4tors may be less likely to enter keeping prices higher for longer since the market may be too small.
q May increase the return to the drug developer but is uncertain and has a longer term poten4ally larger impact on the budget of the drug funding/insurance program.
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q Case of Soricimed—get 7 years of market exclusivity from FDA–only get the exclusivity aaer Phase II and III trials and then is only beneficial if drug is actually approved.
q Use 7 years of guaranteed market exclusivity to go to market to persuade investors to fund them -‐s4ll an uncertain return.
q Moreover even with 7 years exclusivity s4ll need to recover investment costs from small markets—so s4ll probably looking at a high cost per pa4ent/pill for their drug.
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Priority Review Vouchers
q US priority review vouchers: granted to drugs for rare diseases without guaranteeing approval but do move a drug developed by the holder of a voucher to the top of the list for FDA review.
q Has the effect of possibly adding, condi4onal on approval—a couple of years of post-‐approval patent life.
q Not much different from the guaranteed market exclusivity approach if the voucher were only applicable to the rare disease drug.
q However, priority review vouchers while they are granted to companies working on orphan drugs are saleable.
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q Priority review vouchers are regularly sold by the company which in the first instance receives them for a rare disease drug to companies hoping to move large market drugs through the FDA approval process faster.
q Now the price that the voucher sells for will be 4ed not to the size of the market for the orphan drug but rather to the size of an unrelated large market drug.
q The implica4on is that the reward for producing an orphan drug can now exceed the value of the small market without the need to extend the period of market exclusivity beyond a normal patent life.
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Resource pooling across jurisdic.ons
q A drug which is a small market drug in one country will tend to be small market drug in a number of countries.
q Interna4onal coordina4on aimed at in effect pooling a number of small markets together might be desirable.
q Coordina4on mechanisms–for example Health Canada has as part of its draa proposals suggested recognizing a rare drug designa4on from certain other jurisdic4ons.
q It might be the case that for these drugs we may also have to move to a common interna4onal review process.
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Personalized Medicine
q Policy point of view: this isn’t just an issue of what we currently regard as small market.
q Personalized medicine may force re-‐evalua4on of what currently regard as large market diseases
q Actually more like aggregates of small markets if likelihood of a drug working depends on individual pa4ents’ gene4c structure.
q Currently return to developing drugs tends to be spread over a large number of pa4ents but not uncommon that a drug only works on a sub-‐set of the pa4ents.
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q Risk-‐sharing: payment 4ed to ability to demonstrate a degree of success in trea4ng pa4ents.
q If promise of personalized medicine realized, may be less risk to share because can tell in advance who will benefit from treatment with a par4cular drug.
q Effec4vely iden4fying such a drug as a small market q Since market defined not as everyone with the condi4on but as everyone with the condi4on whose individual gene4c make-‐up means that the drug will work on them.
q As reduce uncertainty by iden4fying who will benefit from a par4cular drug may also move towards defining more heath condi4ons as being rare.
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q Ironically, the more precisely we can define disease, the more we will subdivide large market diseases and the more rare diseases we will have.
q We need to sort out the pricing rules, taking account of both demand and supply factors before that happens.
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