Pay a prize for rare cancer drugs instead of hoping for a market
No company can profit from a drug for a cancer that affects a few hundred people. A guaranteed payment for success would change that calculation.
Rare and paediatric cancers lack markets, and existing incentives — orphan designation, priority review vouchers, the proposed transferable exclusivity vouchers — are criticised for poor targeting and high cost to payers. A directly funded prize or advance market commitment, paid on achieving a pre-specified clinical benefit in a named rare indication, targets the payment to the outcome and avoids distorting prices elsewhere.
- Rare and paediatric cancers without markets · Taken together rare cancers are a fifth of all cancers, but each one alone is too small for a company to invest in.
- Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains · The system pays the same for a drug that adds two months as for a cure, so companies race to copy rather than to cure.
- Funding follows fashion, not burden · Money goes to the cancers and questions that are easy or popular, not the ones that kill most or where a dollar would do most.
Pages like this
not linked directly; found by shared links- IdeaOpen-source drug discovery to clinical proof of concept for neglected cancers
Shares Funding follows fashion, not burden, Neuroblastoma (paediatric), Rare and paediatric cancers without markets, Sarcomas (soft tissue, bone, GIST).
- IdeaEscrow a share of adult revenue until the paediatric study is done
Shares Neuroblastoma (paediatric), Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains, Rare and paediatric cancers without markets, Sarcomas (soft tissue, bone, GIST).
- PersonAlexandra "Alex" Scott
Shares Funding follows fashion, not burden, Neuroblastoma (paediatric), Rare and paediatric cancers without markets.
- PersonBrigitte C. Widemann
Shares Neuroblastoma (paediatric), National Cancer Institute (NIH), Sarcomas (soft tissue, bone, GIST).
- PersonTerry Fox
Shares Funding follows fashion, not burden, Rare and paediatric cancers without markets, Sarcomas (soft tissue, bone, GIST).
- IdeaAn open organoid bank for cancers too rare to have models
Shares Neuroblastoma (paediatric), Rare and paediatric cancers without markets, National Cancer Institute (NIH), Sarcomas (soft tissue, bone, GIST).
- IdeaAn international consortium pooling the outcome of every treated child with cancer
Shares Neuroblastoma (paediatric), Rare and paediatric cancers without markets, Sarcomas (soft tissue, bone, GIST).
- PersonMary Lasker
Shares Funding follows fashion, not burden, Incentives reward me-too drugs and marginal gains, National Cancer Institute (NIH).