Bayer CEO: Cancer Drug Is Only For Westerners Who Can Afford It

By Adam Peck on January 26, 2014 - ThinkProgress

BAYER CEO Marijn Dekkers

Fuck him! Asshole!

In 2005, the FDA granted approval for a promising new cancer-fighting drug called Nexavar. Bayer took it to market shortly thereafter, and it is currently an approved treatment for late-stage kidney and liver cancer.

That is, so long as you live in the developed world. In a recently published interview in Bloomberg Businessweek, Bayer CEO Marijn Dekkers said that his company’s drug isn’t for poor people.

“We did not develop this medicine for Indians…we developed it for western patients who can afford it,” he said back in December. The quote is quickly making its way across Indian news outlets.

The comment was in response to a decision by an Indian patent court that granted a compulsory license to a local company to reproduce Bayer’s drug. Under Indian patent laws, if a product is not available locally at a reasonable cost, other companies may apply for licenses to reproduce those products at a more affordable price. Nexavar costs an estimated $69,000 for a full year of treatment in India, 41 times the country’s annual per capita income.

In 2012, Indian pharmaceutical company Natco Pharma Ltd. applied for just such a license, and it was granted. The company began reproducing the drug at a 97 percent discount, offering it for just $177. Bayer has been appealing the ruling ever since, and in December Dekkers told Businessweek that he viewed the compulsory license as “essentially theft” before dismissing poor Indian cancer patients.

Pharmaceutical companies have long been accused of ignoring the plight of those who cannot afford their astronomical prices. In the United States, where insurance companies often pick up most of the tab, consumers are often shielded from the true cost of drugs they are prescribed (Nexavar, for example, costs as much as $96,000 in the United States, but Bayer ensures that eligible US patients only see a $100 copay).

Dekkers’ quote brings into sharp relief the industry’s general ambivalence towards the developing world. A 2012 report from Doctors Without Borders found that most pharmaceutical companies devote only a small fraction of their operating budgets to fighting diseases that disproportionally affect — and kill — millions of the world’s poorest people.

Existing Drug Becomes Cheap Cancer Cure In Canada

University of Alberta scientists do understand the cause of cancer. The dying off of old cells to be replaced by new cells is a normal part of our cellular life-cycle and keeps us well. It seems that in cancerous cells, our body has forgotten how to tell the aged cells how to die off and be replaced by healthy new cells.

This process is governed by the mitochondria and is known as "cell death" or "apoptosis". In a cancer cell, the mitochondria has lost the ability to direct the cell to die off - the sick cell becomes "immortal", spreading and making the person increasingly unwell.

Trials using  dichloroacetate (DCA) have proven this compound can reactivate the mitochondria restoring the cell's original function of "apoptosis" enabling shrinkage in tumor size and mass. Testimonials have shown reversal in illness, remission, clean health tests, increased health and vitality. Favourable results (scientifically measurable) have been accomplished within days (less than a week) of starting treatment with DCA.

"Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the University of Alberta Department of Medicine, has shown that DCA causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors."

It sounds too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their immortality. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.

It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.

Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.

DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar.

Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakiss experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died (Cancer Cell).

Michelakis suggests that the switch to glycolysis as an energy source occurs when cells in the middle of an abnormal but benign lump dont get enough oxygen for their mitochondria to work properly (see diagram). In order to survive, they switch off their mitochondria and start producing energy through glycolysis.

Crucially, though, mitochondria do another job in cells: they activate apoptosis, the process by which abnormal cells self-destruct. When cells switch mitochondria off, they become immortal, outliving other cells in the tumour and so becoming dominant. Once reawakened by DCA, mitochondria reactivate apoptosis and order the abnormal cells to die.

The results are intriguing because they point to a critical role that mitochondria play:  they impart a unique trait to cancer cells that can be exploited for cancer therapy, says Dario Altieri, director of the University of Massachusetts Cancer Center in Worcester.

The phenomenon might also explain how secondary cancers form. Glycolysis generates lactic acid, which can break down the collagen matrix holding cells together. This means abnormal cells can be released and float to other parts of the body, where they seed new tumours.

DCA can cause pain, numbness and gait disturbances in some patients, but this may be a price worth paying if it turns out to be effective against all cancers. The next step is to run clinical trials of DCA in people with cancer. These may have to be funded by charities, universities and governments: pharmaceutical companies are unlikely to pay because they cant make money on unpatented medicines. The pay-off is that if DCA does work, it will be easy to manufacture and dirt cheap.

PBS documentary sheds light on marijuana’s cancer-killing properties

 RAW Replay

on 08.26.11
By Stephen C. Webster

The cancer-killing properties of marijuana were the subject of discussion in a PBS documentary that aired this week to little media fanfare.

While using marijuana to kill cancer may sound like a wild claim to some, it struck Dr. Prakash Nagarkatti as a great idea. In his studies as professor of pathology and microbiology for the University of South Carolina, he tested synthetic cannabis drugs on cancer cells and developed a formula that was able to completely eradicate cancer cells in a test tube.

A follow-up on mice afflicted with cancer found that up to 30 percent in the test group completely rejected their disease, while others had their tumors significantly reduced. The same drug is now being tested on humans with Leukemia.

But it’s not just Dr. Nagarkatti who sees the medical value of marijuana: it’s the whole pharmaceutical industry. And that’s another point the documentary makes, examining the patents various companies have filed, and what they claim marijuana-based drugs could one day be used to treat.

The video below is just an excerpt from the full documentary, which originally aired in Montana amid a debate about repealing that state’s medical marijuana law. The full, nearly hour-long film is available to watch online for free.

This video is from PBS.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

'Untreatable' Cancers Reversed by Experimental Drug

New drug reverses even 'untreatable' cancers
Published on 05-19-2010

Reovirus, which lives in human respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts without causing any symptoms, can help magnify the effects of radiotherapy in treating even the most advanced cancers, laboratory tests have shown.

Tumours shrank or stopped growing in every patient who underwent radiotherapy coupled with a new drug, Reolysin, which contains particles of reovirus.

One patient had a large tumour mass in a salivary gland which was reduced in size enough to be surgically removed after undergoing the treatment. Another who was close to death with a serious form of spreading skin cancer was still alive 17 months later.

A total of 23 patients with a range of solid tumours including lung, bowel, ovarian and skin cancers took part in the clinical trial. All had stopped responding to traditional therapies but were able to get some pain relief from radiation treatment.

The patients were given between two and six injections of Reolysin in escalating doses, combined with low or high dose radiotherapy.

The primary aim was to test whether the treatment was safe, but researchers also measured tumour responses for 14 patients. Tumours either shrank or stopped growing in every case, the scientists reported in the journal Clinical Cancer Research.

The side effects of the treatment were mild and typical of patients receiving radiotherapy alone.

Dr Kevin Harrington, the study leader from the Institute of Cancer Research in London, said: ''The absence of any significant side effects in this study is extremely reassuring for future trials in patients receiving radiotherapy with the aim of curing their cancer.''

The next step will be to investigate the effects of the treatment in patients with newly-diagnosed cancers that would normally be treated with radiotherapy alone, he said.

Dr Brad Thompson, president and chief executive of Oncolytics Biotech Inc, the Canadian manufacturers of Reolysin, said: ''We believe that this study clearly demonstrates that the combination of low dose radiation and Reolysin is well tolerated and that the very high response rate warrants further investigation.''