Kantarjian on Solutions for Oncology Drug Shortages

Hagop M. Kantarjian, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Leukemia at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, explains a strategy that may help with oncology drug shortages in the future.

According to Kantarjian, the United States government, pharmaceutical companies, and cancer centers all have a part to play in managing drug shortages. Some drug shortages can be prevented by the FDA requiring manufacturers to produce a certain number of drugs to be upon approval of a drug.

Using the treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) as an example, Kantarjian explains that there are 2 drugs that are impertinent to having positive outcomes for patients, including ibrutinib (Imbruvica), a Bruton’s tyrosine kinase inhibitor and venetoclax (Venclexta), a BCL-2 inhibitor. In the event that every patient with CLL did not have the option of receiving these drugs, outcomes would be dismal.

TRANSCRIPT:

0.08 | How do we solve the problem of cancer drug shortages? I'm more interested in cancer drugs because patients with cancer can do or die by whether they have a drug available or not. The first issue is to have a source of manufacturing that's reliable, and make sure that the path from the manufacturing source to the drug company to the patient is stable.

0:40 | So, how do you do that? Well, you make a list of the critical cancer drugs, particularly the generic ones and you say, the United States being the richest country in the world, we'll have the government of the United States, and the cancer experts have to secure the source of these critical cancer drugs 100% of the time, to all the to 100% of the patients.

1:10 | For example, you say ibrutinib [Imbruvica] and venetoclax [Venclexta] are critical for CLL. So, we make a list of the 100 or 200 or 300 cancer drugs, which can make or break the life of a patient.