On Wednesday December 5, 2018, UACT, along with KEI, Social Security Works, Health GAP, Public Citizen, Dr. Ophira Ginsburg, and James Love, submitted joint comments in response to a proposed exclusive license for patents on CAR T technology for the treatment of cancers. The Federal Register notice (83 FR 58262) “Prospective Grant of an Exclusive Patent License: Development and Commercialization of Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) Therapies for the Treatment of FMS-Like Tyrosine Kinase 3 (FLT3) Expressing Cancers,” outlined the National Institutes of Health’s intent to grant an exclusive license on these technologies to ElevateBio, a company whose leadership includes the investors behind recent budget-breaking treatments,Read More →

On October 31, 2018 UACT sent the following letter to President Trump regarding his statements about protections for pre-existing conditions in the lead up to the midterm elections. A PDF of the letter is available here.   Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment 1621 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 500 Washington, DC 20009 Tel.: 202.332.2670 www.uact.org October 31, 2018 President Donald Trump The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 President Trump, I am writing on behalf of the Union for Affordable Cancer Treatment (UACT) to say that we are appalled that you are now claiming that the Republican party will protect patients with pre-existingRead More →

Today President Trump promised (again) that he would bring down drug prices and put American patients first. The administration’s approach is to change how Medicare Part B (coverage available as an option for American residents when they are 65 years old or older, or if they qualify through a disability) pays for some of the most expensive prescription drugs, and attempts to imitate (irony alert) what President Trump blames other countries for doing: negotiating prices for their citizens, based largely upon the foreign prices themselves. A planned “international pricing index” (IPI), would cap certain Medicare Part B drug prices to an index from 16 otherRead More →

UACT is disappointed by the preliminary rejection of Yescarta by the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) over its high price, for two reasons: 1) Gilead is asking too much for the treatment which is largely based upon the US National Institutes of Health (NIH owned inventions, and 2) the UK government has not given any public indication it is considering alternatives to withholding coverage to address the problem of an excessive price. Yescarta is the Gilead trade name for axicabtagene ciloleucel, a CD19-directed chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR T) technology invented by the NIH, licensed to Kite/Gilead and approved by theRead More →

The following is the UACT Statement on the July 26, 2018 draft of the NCD outcomes document. July 30, 2018 Today, for patients, their families and caregivers, it is clear that the prices of medicines for cancer and other non-communicable diseases are excessive, and that access to both new and even many older medicines is both restricted and shockingly unequal. None of these core truths is reflected in this draft declaration. It is obvious that the United Nations and the negotiators have been manipulated by the pharmaceutical manufacturers’ lobby to craft a weak and ineffective resolution that fails to address the most important challenges inRead More →