Press Room
From: Morning Health Care Europe <morninghealth@politico.eu>
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2018 at 06:57
Subject: POLITICO Pro Morning Health Care: After Austria comes Romania — Cancer research cash
To: POLITICO Europe Subscribers
RESEARCH — DOES COMMISSION FUNDING MATTER? A study presented Thursday at Gastein made the argument that private funding correlates to a European biotech company becoming successful — but not public funding from Brussels. Looking at Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, the level of private investment also predicts the level of EU funding, as opposed to the EU picking winners that couldn’t have gotten off the ground without Brussels’ help. The study was conducted by the consultancy Vital Transformation, with sponsors including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Pfizer… As the Vital Transformation study suggests, it may not even be the amount of money but how it’s spent. For successful companies, the Commission may be following the lead of private investors. Meanwhile, national governments give primarily to local projects and the Commission tries to boost researchers around the bloc, argue some cancer experts, at the expense of putting the money where it can produce the most results. “The problem is that in Europe, the money is fragmented,” said Stefan Gijssels of Digestive Cancers Europe. “So instead of giving all the money to the absolutely excellent areas, the money is actually dissipated across the region.”
Von: POLITICO Pro Health Care Alert <proalerts@politico.eu>
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 4. Oktober 2018 13:58
Betreff: 5 BIG reasons Europe sucks at curing cancer
5 BIG reasons Europe sucks at curing cancer
By Sarah Wheaton 10/4/18, 1:55 PM CET
This article is part of the Global Policy Lab: Decoding Cancer.
What’s the matter with Europe?
Europeans are far more likely to die of cancer than their counterparts in the United States. (About 262 per 100,000 people die from cancer each year in the EU, compared to 164 on the other side of the Atlantic). And when it comes to developing breakthrough treatments, the Continent lags far behind.
Take treatments for digestive cancers. Of the 128 drugs for conditions like colon and pancreatic cancers currently in development, just seven come from the EU, according to an analysis by Digestive Cancers Europe. From the U.S. — 108.
The consequences are real. European patients get slower access to new therapies. European companies get less biotech cash.
It’s not that the Continent doesn’t have the brains or facilities to keep up, say medical and industry experts. What it lacks it the ability to bring treatments to market.
“There are breakthroughs going on in Europe,” said Duane Schulthess, managing director at the consultancy Vital Transformation. The problem is that “Europe doesn’t have the liquidity to move the companies to the finish line. Regardless of where this stuff is being invented, it’s ending up in the U.S.”
From: Morning Health Care Europe <morninghealth@politico.eu>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2018 at 06:56
Subject: POLITICO Pro Morning Health Care: A vision for flexible pricing — Council talks carcinogens, meds access — Ireland abortion rush
To: POLITICO Europe Subscribers
By Sarah Wheaton
DRUG PRICING — A NEW MODEL FOR NEGOTIATION? Hans-Georg Eichler, the European Medicines Agency’s chief medical officer, has seen the future of drug pricing agreements, and it is flexible, based on outcomes.
As expensive, innovative new therapies hit the market, payers are cowed not just by the high price but also uncertainty about how well they’ll actually work, Eichler said in a new podcast from health consultancy Vital Transformation. “What exactly are we buying? We cannot know that,” he said, characterizing the payers’ view.
Eichler compared the resulting status quo between pharma and health systems to old Western genre cinema, “where two cowboys face each other, both hold a pistol in their hand … and none of them can now move.”
He continued: “If you talk to a payer in Europe, they’ll say we can’t ever start high because [drugmakers] will not ever allow us to go lower.” Likewise, industry feels like they have to open with a steep price because they’ll never be able to ask for more.
Rather than this blind shoot-out, Eichler imagines payers accepting an initial price that includes an “uncertainty discount.” However, as new information comes, “the price would have to go up or down.”
Maybe that sounds like a different sort of fantasy, but Eichler said he’s heard “a change in attitude. Five years ago, the response to this sort of idea would be: “No way, we’re not doing that, we don’t have the resources, we don’t have the level of sophistication, it cannot work,”” he said. Now, however, he hears: “Well yes, it could work in principle.. if there was a useful pilot, if there was a willing company, then we could look at it.” Eichler concluded, “So positions are softening; I think we could get there.”
EMA relocation: Eichler offered an update on the EMA’s Brexit-induced move from London to Amsterdam, noting that the regulator has already launched an “aggressive recruitment” program to compensate for losing an estimated third of its staff. He also offered more details on EMA functions that will have to be pared back for the time being, including international collaborations — “We will be more observers than drivers,” he said — and writing new clinical guidelines for industry. The podcast also touches on Eichler’s work on reimagining clinical trials and his perspective on the EMA’s PRIME program for priority drugs; it’s worth a listen.