March­ing in again? Lat­est Xtan­di pe­ti­tion rais­es ques­tions on if NIH has changed its tune

The NIH is ex­pect­ed to de­cide some­time this month on whether it wants to step in and of­fer cheap­er ver­sions of Astel­las’ prostate can­cer drug Xtan­di, de­spite the ex­ist­ing patents, be­cause of its ex­or­bi­tant price and be­cause the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment helped to pay for the de­vel­op­ment of the drug.

A thumbs up from the NIH would send shock­waves through the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try, which has long in­vest­ed in the US mar­ket be­cause com­pa­nies can charge what­ev­er the mar­ket will bear, in ad­di­tion to re­ceiv­ing lengthy patent and ex­clu­siv­i­ties af­ford­ed to new prod­ucts.

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