Replies to post #409551 on Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[12x]

The $40k per AD patient in US trials (40M for 1,000 patients) seems lower than what SAVA spent but reasonable. SAVA reached 1,000 p3 AD patients in March 2023. The 2021 cash use was 30.2M, 77.5M used in 2022. Assuming the operation cash burn rate is similar between the years, 47M was used to recruit less than 1,000 patients.

https://www.cassavasciences.com/static-files/8c690141-7105-4740-a9f5-8652a40d4533

[Joseph_K]

Excellent post, Doc. Another factor that may lower Anavex's clinical trial costs is their choice of CRO. People on this board have complained about Missling using lower-tier CROs. A friend of mine who works for a CRO has told me that the top-tier CROs charge way more than the smaller ones, though I didn't press her for specifics.

[DaveV-1]

Scan costs
Hey Doc, for awareness these are the costs ICER just used in estimating for the recent approvals in Dec 2022:

Monitoring Costs
For the first year while a patient used donanemab or lecanemab, we assumed they were monitored for ARIA using brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) every three months. Because evidence suggests the vast majority of ARIA occurs within the first year of treatment, no MRIs were modeled after the first year on treatment. We assumed an average brain MRI cost of $261.10 per scan (HCPCS code 70553).
For donanemab, we modeled a PET scan given every six months while on
the drug to test for complete amyloid clearance. If a patient stopped treatment with donanemab due to achieving complete amyloid clearance, they received a PET scan every year to test amyloid levels if they had not reached moderate AD. We assumed an average amyloid PET scan cost of $4,467.

Adverse Event Costs
In addition to the brain MRIs described above for monitoring, if a patient experienced an ARIA event, the patient received a brain MRI every four weeks until the ARIA was either resolved or stabilized.
The average duration of an ARIA event was 12 weeks; therefore, a patient that
experienced an ARIA event received three additional brain MRIs associated with managing the adverse event. We assumed an average brain MRI cost of $261.10 per scan (HCPCS code 70553).