I mostly agree with you. I don't agree on this. I think DCVax-L at 250,000 and even higher, is competitive with the early approvals of drugs like Keytruda that while generally very useful, had terrible side-effects and were for many, many more patients.
It's not that I want them to charge more than they should, but my research says 250,000 actually makes DCVax-L, per patient, given few side-effects, dispensable in a community setting and a longer term treatment that extends life, more affordable, overall, than drugs costing the same or more. So I think people puzzling over the pricing at this stage and the cost and how it's got to be so much less, are really just anticipating things that are not yet issues for approval and really inventing issues to explain away shadows that are invented for lack of other things to talk about.
And yeah, shorts exploit all of the fear mongering. But DCVax-L, even at that price, once covered, is very reasonable overall. And in the longer run, the company will likely figure out better ways to finance it for patients and distribute the cost over time, without trying to become a cancer charity. They actually do have to cover the costs of development to this point and further development. Things don't end on approval of DCVax-L for glioblastoma. All of that comes with more sophisticated operations and financial capabilities and with resources behind them. I do hope that they are planning and have more of a plan than they have revealed so far, though I do also recognize that large drug companies want something like mRNA vaccines rather than cellular treatments because they have never, ever liked the idea of cellular treatments. So they are, it appears, going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into this era of cellular vaccines and treatments. They could have been far more helpful, and really, I suspect that to some large degree, they have enjoyed the tribulations and difficulties and hope to exploit them. But I hope the company has made some progress on that front.
I own NWBO. My posts on iHub are always posted expressly as just my humble opinion (IMHO) and none are advice, just my opinion. I am NOT a financial advisor, and it is assumed that everyone is responsible for their own due diligence.
