5 ms·

This article hits close to home as my father had stage IV melanoma and took 2 rounds of Yervoy before becoming too sick and eventually passed away earlier this

by jreed91 12y ago

This article hits close to home as my father had stage IV melanoma and took 2 rounds of Yervoy before becoming too sick and eventually passed away earlier this year. These drugs are very promising but the costs are absolutely ridiculous. $120,000 for four rounds (which is the initial amount you get before you must wait to complete more) is not viable for most people. Lucky my father has terrific insurance we paid maybe 10% of that cost. I did a lot of research on these drugs and there are some very severe side effects that you must watch out for. For most people these drugs are only slowing down the spread of the disease but by combining yervoy with other chemo drugs it can be very effective at treating melanoma.

hga 12y ago
but the costs are absolutely ridiculous. $120,000 for four rounds... As the article details, it took 15 years to bring this drug to market, and the process has been and continues to be very research intensive. That money also pays for failures, it's not cheap to produce, and it's sold in small quantities for a currently small number of patients. Yeah, it's not wonderful, but every time I hear that sort of thing, I also hear the sentiments that are (not so?) slowly shutting down new drug development. You'll see this play out rather starkly as bacteria become continue to become more resistant to the usual antibiotics.