Why is India's Lenin so cheap? Why is India's Lenin called high imitation medicine
4hw.com.cn: "I'm not the God of medicine" has attracted widespread attention in China. It is also a rare high score film in China in recent years. The film focuses on the story line of India's drug Lenin. So why is India's Lenin cheap? How does India's Lenin compare with genuine Lenin? Let's have a look.
The real name of Lenin in the film is imatinib mesylate, also known as Gleevec. It was once compared by time magazine to a bullet fired at cancer, which can effectively control the chromosome variation of patients with CML and white blood.
If you want to know why greavel is cheap in India, first understand why the price of anticancer drugs is so high?
1. High development cost and expensive patent price
In fact, it usually takes a long time and a huge amount of money to study a new drug, especially a drug that has a significant effect on leukemia control, such as Gleevec & DARR& darr;
The birth of a good medicine is more like the process of 'grinding a sword in ten years'. Pharmaceutical companies have invested huge sums of money, and researchers work day and night. In this way, mankind has overcome difficult and miscellaneous diseases, and more and more incurable diseases have 'life-saving drugs'.
Taking Gleevec as an example, it took about 50 years from the discovery of the target to its approval for listing. Novartis, a pharmaceutical company, invested more than US $5 billion, achieved several academicians of the American Academy of Sciences and gave birth to many major medical discoveries.
In order to have the power and capital base to develop the next drug, pharmaceutical enterprises must sell the patents at a high price during the patent period and make as much profit as possible. According to relevant laws and regulations, patented drugs have a protection period. As long as the period expires, generic drugs can be produced legally. In this way, the price of 'genuine drugs' will encounter a' cliff fall ', which will no longer make a lot of money for pharmaceutical enterprises. Therefore, as long as a drug is within the patent period, patients in most countries can't eat cheap drugs.
2. Many channels
From the production of a box of drugs to the hands of consumers, there are layers of agency relations, such as provincial agents to municipal agents, municipal agents to hospitals and so on. As each layer should have its own profit space, the drug price will be further increased.
3. Anticancer drugs enter the 'era of targeted drugs'
In recent years, targeted drugs have been more and more popular in the treatment of major diseases such as cancer. Targeted drugs can target specific lesion sites and accumulate or release effective components at the target sites. It can not only improve the efficacy, but also inhibit the toxic and side effects and reduce the damage to normal tissues and cells. Among the top 10 global anticancer drug sales in 2017, targeted drugs can be said to be a strong 'bully list'.
However, while the therapeutic effect is good, the price of targeted drugs is also quite high.
Under the joint influence of these factors, the cost of anticancer drugs has become a heavy burden on many patients' families.
Why is it so cheap to buy from India?
To understand this problem, we must first know the concept of 'generic drugs':
If a country strictly implements drug patent protection, the generic drugs of corresponding drugs cannot be manufactured during the protection period. Most countries in the world, including China and the United States, implement patent protection. However, India is an exception.
India applies to compulsory patent licensing: when a patent endangers the health of residents and national security, the state has the right to grant it to its own manufacturers for compulsory imitation without the consent of the patent owner, which can prevent backward countries from being unable to ensure national basic medical treatment and national security because they can't afford patented drugs.
Although Laos, Bangladesh and other underdeveloped countries also apply the compulsory license of this patent. However, only India leads the world in the production of generic drugs - even new drugs soon listed in the United States will soon appear in the Indian market.
Do Indian high imitation drugs have the same effect as genuine drugs?
In most countries, the listing standards of generic drugs are very high. The US FDA (food and Drug Administration) stipulates that generic drugs must be exactly the same as its generic patented drugs in 'effective ingredients, dose, safety, efficacy, effects (including side effects) and targeted diseases'.
For example, 'Goubuli' is a brand patented steamed stuffed bun. To make a imitation steamed stuffed bun 'pig Buli', then 'pig Buli' must be consistent with 'Goubuli' in terms of steamed stuffed bun size, seasoning composition, meat and vegetable mixing ratio, number of folds, etc. The regular generic drug of Gleevec in India is basically the same as the patented drug of Gleevec in Novartis, Switzerland. The effect of generic drug of Gleevec has also been tested by countless patients with chronic myeloid leukemia.
The same effect, very low price, this is the 'credit' of generic drugs