As of: March 26, 2024, 5:35 p.m
By: Susanne Sasse
Comments
Press
Split
Munich's top lung tumor expert Prof. Amanda Tufman is worried about her patient, whose cancer drug capmatinib has been withdrawn from the market.
© Martin Hangen
Munich's top lung cancer expert is horrified: Drug manufacturer is taking cancer drug from the market that could give one of its patients a lifetime.
The reason: A dispute over money at the expense of the sick!
Munich - It's a shock: The cancer drug capmatinib, which the lung cancer patient Dr.
Ruth B. tolerated it very well and has been keeping her tumor in her lungs at bay since May 2023, and the manufacturer Novartis has taken it off the market in Germany.
The reason: The group could not agree on the price with the German health insurance companies.
Dr.
Ruth B., whose advanced lung cancer has been kept at bay by the new cancer drug for a good nine months, doesn't know what to do.
She could now get the drug in another European country - and pay the enormous price of 10,500 euros per monthly pack out of her own pocket.
Because after the withdrawal from the market in Germany, the assumption of costs also ceased.
That’s not a solution – of course.
Because what good is a monthly pack when it comes to the long-term future?
Despite European approval, the product is being withdrawn from the market in Germany
How did the mess happen?
Quite simply, it's about money.
Background information: If there is European approval, a manufacturer can bring a drug onto the market in Germany.
He can then sell it at his desired price until negotiations with the German health insurance companies regarding a reimbursement price have been completed.
In the case of capmatinib, which the Novartis company developed for the targeted treatment of a rare form of lung cancer, these price negotiations failed.
This is a catastrophe for the patients.
There is another drug against the same rare type of cancer.
It comes from Merck Healthcare Germany, is called Tepotinib and costs less than half what Novartis wants for its product.
But patient Ruth B. could not tolerate this remedy.
She developed extreme water retention, even her heart and lungs were affected.
“It just didn’t work,” sums up her treating doctor, Prof. Tufman, lung cancer expert at the Ludwig Maximilians University Hospital (LMU).
The head of the Lung Tumor Center explains: “It happens again and again that a patient cannot tolerate a certain medication - so it is important that we have an alternative medication that we can switch to.” But in the case of Ruth B. it is possible not anymore.
Surname |
Prof. Dr. Amanda Tufman |
function |
Head of Lung Tumor Center LMU Hospital in Munich |
Studies |
Toronto (Canada) and Munich |
Specialist qualifications |
Specialist in internal medicine and pulmonology |
Number of publications |
215 publications (mainly on the topic of lung cancer), cited 2226 times |
Manufacturer takes medicine from Munich woman off the market: dispute over money to the detriment of the sick
The tragedy: Money may be important for health insurance companies and manufacturers, but for patients like Ruth B. it's about survival.
The 69-year-old's medication supplies only last for two weeks.
Prof. Tufman can still prescribe the medication for her, but Ruth B. would have to get it in a neighboring country or order it as an import and pay for it herself.
Unless there is a special authorization from the health insurance company.
Prof. Tufman now applies for this to the health insurance company on behalf of the patient.
But whether and when this will work is unclear.
Only a few lung cancer patients are eligible for treatment with capmatinib or tepotinib.
“I estimate that there are around 400 patients in Germany who are dependent on the drug capmatinib - so now 400 patients have to submit applications, and the different health insurance companies can decide differently about who will cover the costs,” explains Tufman.
This particularly annoys her because patients know that there is a new drug that works well for them - only it has been taken off the market, says the lung cancer expert.
Prof. Amanda Tufman and her patient Dr.
Ruth B. and her daughter Marion are looking for a way to get the cancer drug that has been taken off the market.
© Martin Hangen
My news
Sweater, park bench, daffodils: The hidden messages in Princess Kate's video reading
Seriously injured ski jumping ace with devastating bedside diagnosis
Putin wants an “empire” – also with the help of Soviet material: “Losses are an acceptable price” read
Bankruptcy of German industry giant: next traditional company goes bankrupt
“That’s disrespectful”: Civil servants earn as little as citizens’ benefit recipients – and the traffic lights are watching
39 mins ago
Bridge collapse in Baltimore: Authority names number of victims - Governor celebrates crew as “heroes” read
Today, cancer medicine is making enormous progress and can help more and more patients who would have been lost just a few decades ago.
That Dr.
Contrary to all predictions, Ruth B. is still alive, among other things, because new medications are constantly being used, some of which were approved not long ago.
Prof. Tufman also reminds that studies on the new drugs are financed by the pharmaceutical industry.
Patient Ruth B., who used to work as a doctor herself, is a good example.
The now 69-year-old from Munich had to fight with breast cancer two decades ago - and got well again.
But during a follow-up examination in 2011, a carcinoma was discovered in her lungs.
“At the time, they said I had six months left without chemo; with chemotherapy and radiation, my predicted life expectancy was one year,” says the 69-year-old.
But the treatment worked far better than predicted.
“It worked great and I was cancer-free for years - until unfortunately a recurrence occurred in 2000, meaning cancer cells grew again in the lungs,” summarizes the patient - who, by the way, never smoked, like 15 percent of all lung cancer patients.
In this respect, it is important to keep your cancer screening appointments – whether you are a high-risk patient or not.
This is how cancer treatments work
When Ruth B.'s recurrence occurred in 2020, she was initially treated with a novel combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy.
The combination of the two types of therapy is effective because they both attack the cancer in different ways.
This combination was not yet approved for lung cancer in 2011.
To put it simply, chemotherapy kills all rapidly growing body cells, including the cancer tumor.
Immunotherapy works differently: the tumors grow in the body and manage to camouflage themselves from the body's own immune system.
In immunotherapy, which only works on certain types of cancer, drugs simply tear off the invisibility of the cancer cells so that the immune system recognizes them.
Or the body's own immune system is stimulated so strongly that it then takes action against the camouflaged tumors.
But both types of action are not without side effects.
The body's immune system is a complex system, and every intervention will show side effects at some point - for example through organ damage or inflammation in other parts of the body.
In this respect, targeted therapy with the drug, which specifically attacks the tumor cells with the biological characteristic “MET mutation”, is now the drug of choice in Ruth B.'s case because it works and she tolerates it well.
As a targeted drug, capmatinib does not attack as many healthy cells as immunotherapy or chemotherapy would.
The market withdrawal is therefore a shock.
“Without my daughter, who supports me a lot, and without Prof. Tufman, who is very committed, I would be lost in the fight for the medication,” says the patient.
Market withdrawals happen again and again, most recently Janssen-Cilag withdrew the lung cancer drug Amivantamab from the market.
You can find more news in our Merkur.de app, now in an improved design with more personalization functions.
Directly available for download, more information can be found here.
Are you an enthusiastic user of WhatsApp?
Merkur.de will now keep you up to date via a new Whatsapp channel.
Click here to go directly to the channel.