The Price of Health by Michael Kinch & Lori Weiman

Author:Michael Kinch & Lori Weiman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2021-04-06T00:00:00+00:00

MAbs Up Close and Personal

In the last chapter we briefly touched upon a product named Synagis, a monoclonal antibody developed and marketed originally by MedImmune, where both authors of this book would work for a time. However, prior to joining MedImmune, Dr. Kinch and his wife would encounter this breakthrough product in a very personal way.

In 2000, the Kinches’ son Grant was born many weeks premature. After spending his first ten days in the neonatal intensive care unit, the baby was released and his relieved parents presumed that was the end of the story. However, the first visit to the pediatrician’s office changed this assumption. By this time, it was late autumn, with cold and flu season rapidly approaching. Although a cold for new parents is always a time of concern, certain causes of the cold can be deadly for premature infants. Because the lungs of these smallest of our species are among the last organs to develop, pathogens that infect the lungs can quickly turn deadly. Of particular note is a germ known as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). This virus causes a minor cold in adults and older children, but can be fatal for neonates, especially premature babies. Not only are the lungs of premature infants underdeveloped and very small, but their immune systems also are less advanced than full-term infants, having missed out on the transfer of healthy components from the mother’s immune system, typically transferred during the final weeks of gestation.

The Kinches’ pediatrician recommended their son receive a monoclonal antibody drug that had been approved only a year or so before. This medicine, palivizumab (trade name Synagis), happened to be one of the earliest monoclonal antibody drugs approved by the FDA, and as we mentioned earlier, the first monoclonal antibody ever approved for an infectious disease. Dr. Kinch and his wife, who were both academic scientists and at the time studying monoclonal antibodies, were amused at the fact that their son had been prescribed one of the very few drugs of this type.

The Kinches’ amusement was short-lived as they learned that the price tag for this drug was just over six hundred dollars a month and repeat doses would be needed each month of the cold and flu season for the next two years. Admittedly, their insurance company picked up much of the cost, but at first, it was reluctant to do so, concerned about the outrageous price tag of the vital medicine. The Kinches were informed that a cost of two thousand dollars per year was excessive but, after a back and forth between the insurance company and their pediatrician, the treatments proceeded.

Fortunately for the Kinches, Synagis would produce the desired outcome as it would for thousands of other children born prematurely. Within the first six months of its first sale, Synagis became one of the most successful biotechnology product launches in history at that time.8

We will return to this particular story later in the book but for now, the story seems rather quaint, quite like

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