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Comment by byteCoder | Hacker News Reader

Also, besides the overall success of my treatment, other than regular followup scans, I don't require any further medications of any sort. It's a one-and-done treatment. I'm certain that Big Pharma doesn't like these treatments.

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Congratulations on a successful treatment! It is so wonderful to hear stories like these. Immuno-oncology is bringing great hope to mutation-rich cancers like melanoma.

>I'm certain that Big Pharma doesn't like these treatments.

You would be certainly wrong on that part. Immuno-oncology has been "Big Pharma's" major focus for the past 5-10 years, inspired in no small part by the work of Rosenburg and many others. One of the most recent approvals discussed on HN was for a CAR T-cell targeted against CD19. Big Pharma would also be very happy to sell immune checkpoint inhibitors for use in combination therapy with adoptive cell transfer.

I hope that I'm wrong. Many more patients can possibly be saved with more widespread use of this treatment. Of course, the FDA needs to modernize their own approval processes to deal with such personalized treatments. It's my understanding that my lab-expanded lymphocytes needed to be individually approved by the FDA.

I do know that my specific trial at NIH was sponsored by Lion Biotechnologies as part of that company acquiring a license to reproduce the laboratory processing for the TIL ACT.

Yep. Novartis' new CAR was recommended for approval last week. ~100 are in the FDA pipeline, and now that the first was unanimously approved, expect a lot more.

Paywalled, but a good review of the 100 in trials right now: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27613725

The people who run Big Pharma sometimes get cancer themselves, too, as well as their loved ones.

It's not like there's a shortage of maladies people would be willing to pay a lot for treatments for.

I have had two melanomas so far luckily for now early stage. I am lucky to be treated and checked by one of the best at Sloan Memorial, but with more than a thousand moles my doctor told me to expect to get more.

I really hope if we don't catch one of these in stage one that I will be able to get treatment like yours.

With regards to big pharma as far as I understand the problem seems to be a little different namely that it's not a pill or a treatment as such but a combination of things which means big pharma wont necessarily be investing heavily in it as they can't turn it into a product (again as far as I understand).

Last but not least. Congrats on the lucky outcome.

This is a common thought but overblown. True cures would also bring enormous profits.

At $300,000 each (from the article) I think they and their shareholders would offer it gladly. How many Viagras do they have to sell to match that revenue?

According to Google one 100mg Viagra tablet costs $60. So they only need to sell 5,000.

This explains a lot about all the spam about alternative versions of this drug

(though you can probably fly to Mexico or Canada and fly back with a good amount of it for cheaper)

What the hell? Where did you see that?

The price in Australia is AUD$30 (~USD$24) for a 12-pack of 100mg tablets [1]. That's totally unsubsidised, although you do need a prescription. How on earth could they literally cost thirty times more in the states?

[1] http://www.chemistwarehouse.com.au/buy/61362/Viagra-100mg-Ta...

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