Generic chemotherapy drugs

Chemotherapy faces a period of great change. There are pressures to reduce the cost of drug purchase and administration for established drugs. Some indications of the pressure in the USA include new Medicare schedules for payment of oncologists, which reduce funding for administration of chemotherapy. The reduced funding for branded drugs will encourage the purchase of generic drugs and these now have greater professional acceptability than before. According to the former Director of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and present Director of Medicare Dr Mark McClellan:

More standard therapies will be available in oral form, which will further reduce the administration costs of drugs. Such a change will have particular implication for the health system in Germany where chemotherapy has often been delivered on an in-patient basis. A new range of drugs will become available for later stage cancer. These biological acting drugs will cost $10,000–15,000 per treatment cycle and will be aimed either at rarer cancers or the later stages of more common cancers. The actual cost of the drug will be only one part of the total cost which will often involve additional time from specialists and diagnostic tests. These new therapies will raise challenges of targeting.