Price of 40-year-old cancer drug raised from $50 to $768 a pill

Rob Beschizza 10:57 am Wed Dec 27, 2017

The cost of lomustine, a veteran cancer drug, have skyrocketed after a startup bought the rights to it and hiked prices 1,400 percent.

According to the Wall Street Journal, lomustine was sold by Bristol-Myers Squib for years under the brand name CeeNU at a price of about $50 a capsule for the highest dose. The drugmaker sold lomustine in 2013 to a little-known Miami startup called NextSource, which proceeded to hike lomustine's price nine times since. It now charges about $768 per pill for the medication.

According to an analysis done for the Journal by Truveen Health Analytics and Elsevier, NextSource this year raised prices for the drug, which it rebranded as Gleostine, by 12 percent in November following a 20 percent increase in August.

Nextsource CEO Robert Dicrisci, pictured, says they base pricing on "product-development costs, regulatory-agency fees, and the benefit the treatment delivers to patients." As it didn't develop the drug and regulatory fees are not up 1,400%, that leaves the last part of his formulation. It is, in all fairness, a good way of suggesting that your life is surely worth every penny you have.

Even mild coronavirus cases can lead to brain damage, say doctors

Yahoo News reports that a team of doctors in Britain is warning that people with mild cases of COVID-19 could suffer from "potentially fatal complications in the brain including delirium,… READ THE REST
Pop-up wearable tent for COVID-19 protection in offices, schools, and medical facilities

A few years back, my brother Rick Pescovitz came up with Under The Weather Pods, single-person pop-up shelters. (You may have caught Rick on Shark Tank.) Rick was sick of… READ THE REST
Trump demands Supreme Court kill Affordable Care Act, aka 'Obamacare'

Because the cruelty is the point. READ THE REST
Short Post, just one paragraph

Dessert cheesecake wafer bear claw fruitcake. Fruitcake chupa chups donut candy canes marzipan. Apple pie sweet roll tart chocolate cake macaroon marshmallow carrot cake gummi bears sweet. Pastry sugar plum… READ THE REST
Save 50% on a 1-year subscription to Dashlane's premium password manager

We all know vital information about ourselves and our private digital accounts can be compromised by cybercriminals. However, many would be frightened to know just how compromised they and their… READ THE REST
The Bite Helper removes the itch of a mosquito bite in seconds

While mosquitoes have certainly earned their title as the deadliest animal on earth, their impact on most of our lives is usually a lot less consequential. But even though they… READ THE REST