As many cancer sufferers are aware, a continued need for new cancer drugs is essential to continue to reduce the incidence of a variety of cancers. While the incidence of some cancers like lung cancer, colorectal cancer and prostate cancer have declined over the last decade, other cancers have increased. Most notably pancreatic, renal and esophageal cancer incidence has increased, and this has in part been associated with the obesity epidemic throughout the nation (Eheman, et al., 2012). Unfortunately this continued need for innovative strategies for developing new drugs has been met with economic constraints as well as regulatory and commercial constraints. As a result, new cancer drugs have actually declined annually over the past several years. And even those produced have been offered at increasing costs to patients (Goozner, 2012). As a means to remedy this situation, developing new business models toward more effective cancer drug therapies are required. Critical pathway initiatives developed through private and public agency collaborations offers the best approach to accomplish this (Woodcock & Woosley, 2008).
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The business of developing new cancer drugs cannot be considered without assessing the economic situation involved. Many private pharmaceutical companies invest large amounts of money into research and development of these drugs each year. In fact, there are currently 887 cancer drugs in development worldwide representing an overall increase of 24 percent since 2006. This reflects over 30 percent of all new drugs being researched (Goozner, 2012). But the cost of these new cancer drugs is astronomical. The cheapest price for annual therapy of a newly released cancer drug in 2011 was $44,000 a year while the highest peaked at $216,000 a year (Goozner, 2012). These increases have occurred due to several factors. First, research and development costs have increased for more specialized drugs.
