Scoop: NIH re­sets the clock on Xtan­di 'march-in' pe­ti­tion re­quest from pa­tients with prostate can­cer

First, they heard noth­ing. Then, the NIH said in Jan­u­ary that they would hear some­thing in a month.

But now, that time­line has been ex­tend­ed even fur­ther out, per­haps due to the shock­waves that NIH would send to the bio­phar­ma in­dus­try if it de­cid­ed to use so-called “march-in” rights to low­er the price of a drug that still has patents pro­tect­ing its mo­nop­oly.

The lat­est cor­re­spon­dence from the NIH’s Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor, which is re­view­ing this pe­ti­tion and has de­nied past march-in re­quests, to Robert Sachs, one of the pe­ti­tion­ers and pa­tients with prostate can­cer who are seek­ing to bring down the price of Astel­las’ ex­pen­sive prostate can­cer drug Xtan­di, shows the NIH hasn’t even re­al­ly be­gun its re­view.

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