Ashley Margol, Co-Founder at Golden Thread, Co-Leader at Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Consortium, shared on LinkedIn:
“Generic drugs can cost almost nothing when you purchase them at a pharmacy and still be too expensive for a pediatric cancer clinical trial to supply.
That sounds like a contradiction. It isn’t. Many pediatric cancer trials study generic drugs – testing whether medicines developed for other purposes can help children with cancer, or pairing established medications with newer agents.
But a trial has to provide that medication to every child who enrolls, and the way that supply is secured and distributed can turn an inexpensive generic into a prohibitive cost that prevents a study from opening.
Cassie K. and I at Golden Thread are honored to have partnered with Alan Bowe, Chris Crawford and their respective teams at Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, PBC and RxSaveCard to build a way around this – study medications delivered directly to patients’ homes, through a mechanism that we developed and that a trial can actually afford.
What strikes me as a physician is that this was never a scientific problem. It was a financial and process problem, and those problems are solvable.
This partnership is timely as we are heading into September, which is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. This is one specific barrier, removed.”
You can also read: Join the Nature Conference to Explore the Future of Pediatric Cancer Innovation – St. Jude
