I am a three time relapsed Multiple Myeloma patient. I was diagnosed with MM in July of 2003. MM is a rare form of blood cancer, with no cure. After 13 years I know quite a bit about cancer therapy and research, and about the availability of several cancer drugs and their approximate cost.
This leads to an article I read about a year ago. A doctor who was treating several female patients for CML, Chronic Myeloidal Leukemia, was convinced he had a potential med. that he and a couple of colleagues had designed by computer model and tested in the lab that appeared not only to kill the CML, but appeared to have the capability to put patients in remission.
After being rebuffed by a big time, very well known college back east to do more research on the doctor’s theory for the med., he decided to ask a friend at a well known pharmaceutical company about producing more of this particular med. The company had produced small amounts for clinical trials. The pharmaceutical company representative/friend said that “there wasn’t a big enough market, $$$$, to produce it.” Huh?
The doctor then went over the heads of certain people and went straight to the FDA. He had the computer research model and test results in hand. The FDA told the doctor that he should submit a proposal and they would approve it right away. He did and they did. The med. was the first of its kind to help not just female CML patients, but all of the people who had CML.
But this didn’t just happen…a web site, designed to be a petition, was started by a CML patient asking for people to sign it, to convince the pharmaceutical company to increase the amount of the med. they had produced for clinical trials. This petition went directly to the pharmaceutical company with several thousand signatures. The petition made enough of an impre$$ion on the pharmaceutical company to begin producing more of the med. But most important it worked.
It was a blockbuster CML med. Profits $oared, in the billions after a couple of years. That’s “illion$” with a “b. “
And they didn’t get it the first time? Because they didn’t think there were enough CML patients to make a profit?
Arrows Point Toward Microscopic Image of Chronic Myeloidal Leukemia Cells
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