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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 →

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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 →

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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 →