Summer Project Turns Into Leukemia Testing Breakthrough; New York Times, 11/28/16

Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times; Summer Project Turns Into Leukemia Testing Breakthrough:

'Gleevec, which made almost $5 billion for Novartis last year, has been at the center of a long battle between pharmaceutical companies and activists fighting price increases. The drug cost about $26,000 per year in 2001, and Novartis repeatedly raised the price even as competitors emerged; early this year, it was more than $120,000.

Those who support broader access to medicines argue that poor countries should reject patents and make generic versions of leukemia drugs. In 2013, India’s highest court struck down Novartis’s patent application for Gleevec, opening the way for generics. They now cost about $400 a year in India and about $9,000 in Canada."

India’s Novartis Decision; New York Times, 4/4/13

Editorial Board, New York Times; India’s Novartis Decision: "The ruling will allow the sale of generic versions of Gleevec in India and other countries where it is not patented at less than one-20th of the roughly $70,000 a year it costs in the United States. It will not affect the price of the drug in America. This case is unique because it concerns an innovative and useful drug whose creation happened to straddle the change in Indian patent law. The ruling is important, nonetheless, because it establishes a limited precedent that requires drug companies to show real improvements in efficacy before they can get patent protection on updates to existing drugs in India. That could help poor patients get drugs at prices they can afford while preserving an incentive for true innovation."