Listening to Provenge - what a costly cancer treatment says about future Medicare policy - Abstract

Center for the Evaluation of Value and Risk in Health, Institute for Clinical Research and Health Policy Studies, Tufts Medical Center, Boston.

Health Economics Research Group, Brunel University, Uxbridge, United Kingdom.

 

 

In April 2010, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved sipuleucel-T (Provenge), a novel cellular immunotherapy for the treatment of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic, metastatic, castration-resistant (hormone-refractory) prostate cancer.(1),(2) The pivotal clinical trial demonstrated the benefits of sipuleucel-T: an increase in median survival of 4.1 months as compared with placebo and fewer side effects than occur with docetaxel.(2) Priced at $31,000 per treatment, with a usual course of three treatments, sipuleucel-T is one of the most expensive cancer therapies ever to hit the marketplace. In June 2010, in response to questions about whether and how its regional contractors would . . .

Written by:
Chambers JD, Neumann PJ.   Are you the author?

Reference: N Engl J Med. 2011 Apr 6. Epub ahead of print.
doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1103057

PubMed Abstract
PMID: 21470004

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