New version of cancer drug Keytruda is 'easier' but poised to keep price high, N.Y. Times reports

Although drug manufacturer Merck says its new injected version of Keytruda will be cheaper and easier,  prices will probably stay high.

That conclusion was drawn in a recent story by Rebecca Robbins in The New York Times.

A subhead in the online article, which labels the original drug a "blockbuster," says the new version, which was given Federal Drug Administration last Friday, "stands to slow the adoption of cheaper competitors and increase costs by billions of dollars."

Dr. Benjamin Rome

The new version, Keytruda Qlex, is given via a shot under the skin while the original therapy is given through tubes as an intravenous infusion, the piece notes.

Merck, whose original patent is scheduled to run out in 2028, "followed a well-worn playbook," Robbins' story says, explaining that the corporation's "strategy is known as a product 'hop.' A company rides out its monopoly on the original drug, and then, a few years before competition reaches the market, the drugmaker 'hops' to a new version that remains protected by patents."

The Times article quotes Dr. Benjamin Rome, health policy researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, as saying that "we probably don't want to be paying so much much for these small additions on the tail end of a product that has already made billions of dollars."

Robbins' piece also reports that Democrat Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont "have accused Merck of abusing the patent system with the new Keytruda shot."

Dr. Marjorie Green, a  Merck exec, has called the new version "a meaningful advance," according to the Times.

Keytruda, which has been given 2.9 million patients and is "approved to treat 18 types of cancer, including of the skin, lung, breast, and colon," helped former President Jimmy Carter "extend his life by nearly a decade," the story adds. 

The drug, which accounts for nearly half of Merck's revenue, has generated $146 billion  in sales for the business. 

The new kinds of injections "have proved popular with hospitals," the story says, "because they free up infusion chairs for patients receiving chemotherapy and allow them to treat more patients." In a clinical study funded by Merck, the piece continues, "the Keytruda shot, injected into the stomach area or thigh, took about two minutes to administer compared with 30 minutes for the original infusion."

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