Access to medicine - HER2+ MBC included in longer article

Longtermsurvivor

Big Pharma’s worst nightmare - Jamie Love

HER2+ MBC buried in this story on access to lifesaving medicine

Here's an excerpt, click on link to read article:

In 2010, the cause Jamie Love has fought for all his life suddenly became intensely personal. His wife and colleague, Manon Ress, was diagnosed with stage-four breast cancer. Ress asked her doctor how long she had. Not 10 to 20 years, she was told, but probably five to 10. That was good news. Long enough to get a dog.

Within days of her diagnosis, Ress started chemotherapy, but since both her mother and her sister had suffered from cancer, it was possible she had an inherited genetic propensity to the disease that could affect which treatment she should be given. There were delays in getting the test – probably, Love believes, because it was patented.

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Ress's aggressive cancer responded to the drug Herceptin for a time. When that stopped working, Ress was prescribed T-DM1, marketed by the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche as Kadcyla. The drug was originally listed in the UK at £90,000 per patient per year, making it the most expensive breast cancer drug ever sold.