US lawmakers call for lowering price of prostate cancer drug

US lawmakers are training their guns on the pharmaceutical industry over sky-high prescription drug prices. The issue has figured prominently in Washington and on the campaign trail and had been dragging down stock prices of many drugmakers.

San Francisco-based Medivation Inc's shares plunged yesterday after a group of lawmakers initiated a campaign to potentially lower the price of a drug for advanced prostate cancer, Xtandi.

The drug is jointly marketed in the US by Japanese drugmaker Astellas Pharma and its partner, Medivation Inc. The Japanese company sells Xtandi outside the  US.

In a letter to the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health, representatives Lloyd Doggett and Peter Welch and senator Bernie Sanders called on the agencies to step in to cut prices for Xtandi, saying it cost four times more in the US than in a number of other developed countries.

The senators are asking for public hearings on the drug, which they say was developed at the University of California, Los Angeles, through taxpayer-supported research grants. The lawmakers want the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to consider overriding Xtandi's patent, under which, Medivation and Astellas enjoy exclusive sales for a decade or more. The move would allow for Xtandi's price to be reduced.

''Under current law, NIH can take this step if federal funds supported a drug's development and the company is selling it at an unreasonably high price,'' the lawmakers said in a statement.

''When Americans pay for research that results in a pharmaceutical, that drug should be available at a reasonable price,'' said Doggett, co-chair of the House Democratic Caucus Prescription Drug Task Force, Reuters reported, ''An unaffordable drug is 100 percent ineffective."

According to a spokesman for Astellas 81-per cent of privately insured patients paid $25 or less out of pocket per month for the medication in 2015 and 79 per cent of Medicare patients paid nothing out of pocket.

For eligible patients who did not have insurance or were underinsured and had an annual adjusted household income of $100,000 or less, Astellas provides Xtandi for free, spokesman Tyler Marciniak said.

He added, of the 20,000 men treated with Xtandi last year, over 2,000 received the drug for free.