Cheating Death for 4 Additional Months – Provenge Cancer Vaccine to the Fore

Could a price label be placed on the lives of prostate cancer patients?

With the arrival of the innovatory Provenge cancer vaccine therapy, that label has been placed at around 23000 dollars/month of life added – aggregating to 93000 dollars for a therapy extending life, by an average of 4 months.

By existent sky-rocketing healthcare expenses, the almost 6-digit expenses for Provenge has evoked queries amongst several health care professionals, however for males who have gained from this path-breaking novel treatment, it definitely is money well-spent.

Patients who have been given Provenge during the 2007 scientific studies have shown great improvement with steady drop in the PSA level (test for gauging prostate cancer existence). Disparate to side-effect eliciting radiation therapy sessions, Provenge causes negligible side-effects in the 3 sessions deemed necessary to undergo.

However with sky-spiralling healthcare costs, that expense on multiplication with the scores of patients annually that would be eligible for the therapy has raised worries for several health policy boffins.

Provenge Makers Justify High Costs

Mitchell Gold, chief executive officer cum president of Dendreon, the firm producing Provenge states that this radical technology accountable for the foremost cancer vaccination therapy has taken fifteen years to make and has involved a painstaking process. He further added that they had to generate over one million dollars for backing the developmental process and when such aspects are taken into consideration the pricing is comparatively fair.

Gold further added that Provenge cost was determined on the basis of the general background of therapy costs for cancer. Being specific, the equivalent chemotherapy (Taxotere) administered for later staging prostate cancer costs around 23000 dollars/month of life prolonged by the therapy.

This was incorporated partly while setting the costs for Provenge – ‘4 months’, of prolonged survival would come up to around 93000 dollars value label.

Provenge Prostate Cancer Vaccine – Survival at any Cost?

As Provenge merely is a 3-session long therapy spanning over a month’s time and causing lesser side-effects, Gold emphasizes that it offers enhances value in comparison to chemotherapy that lasts for months on end and causing weariness, nausea among several nasty side-effects.

However, does placing a cost at par with several analogously expensive cancer therapies is at all a right price?

Speaking in-depth about the matter of sprite, Asst. Prof. David Howard from the Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health states that since cancer therapy is generally provided cover by insurance, hence it is the insurance service providers and Medicare who have to usually respond to such prices. An estimate two lakh new-fangled prostate cancer cases would be identified during 2010, as per information provided by the NCI (National Cancer Institute).

Even though merely a portion of such cases would have eligibility for being treated with Provenge, the likely load on Medicare funding is hefty.

Presently, Medicare is not permitted to reject a therapy merely on the basis of costing, however imminently; it would become trickier in sustaining cover for such hugely expensive methods taking into consideration the Medicare program is already faced with a massive long-standing shortage.

Medicare Verdict – Imminent Cover

Several locally placed Medicare suppliers do offer coverage for Provenge however, Medicare nationwide would take a year’ time for reviewing it prior to providing it autonomously.

Chemotherapy has been found to kill novel cells in the body for assaulting cancerous cells; however Provenge functions by revving up the person’s immune system and train it to assault invading cancerous cells definitely.

After favourable study outcomes during April, Provenge garnered the FDA nod for usage on people having later staging prostate cancer and have developed resistance to hormone therapy.

The study printed in the New England Journal of Medicines found that patients who took Provenge managed to survive for 4 months more as compared to patients taking Placebo and had considerably lesser side-effects as compared to the ones generally noted with chemo and radiation therapies.

The therapy is customized wherein the immune system factors of a patient are merged with an immune-bolstering agent plus prostate cancer specific antigen thus constituting Provenge. The vaccination is then reintroduced back inside the person’s system where it is incorporated into the immune system of the body.

Popularity: 5% [?]