Medicare To Pay For Pricey Prostate Drug

Medicare says it will pay for the prostate cancer drug Provenge, even though it costs about $93,000 for a full treatment.

The decision was not completely unexpected, since Medicare routinely pays for drugs that receive Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. The FDA approved Provenge for a mid stage of prostate cancer.

Medicare officials brushed aside suggestions that their deliberations about Provenge represent a crackdown on expensive drugs. The agency said it merely desires a uniform pricing policy.

The decision, which is open to public comment but is expected to become final in June, makes Provenge available to Medicare patients with mid stages of prostate cancer. Those with early and late stages will be reviewed on a case by case basis, according to the agency.

In granting approval April 29, 2010, the FDA said Provenge is indicated for the treatment of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic prostate cancer that has spread to other parts of the body and is resistant to standard hormone treatment.

Provenge is a therapy designed to stimulate a patient's own immune system to respond against the cancer. Each dose of Provenge is manufactured by obtaining a patient's immune cells from the blood, using a machine in a process known as leukapheresis.

To enhance their response against the cancer, the immune cells are then exposed to a protein that is found in most prostate cancers, linked to an immune stimulating substance. After this process, the patient's own cells are returned to the patient to treat the prostate cancer. Provenge is administered intravenously in a three-dose schedule given at about two-week intervals.

Almost all of the patients who received Provenge had some type of adverse reaction. Common side effects included chills, fatigue, fever, back pain, nausea, joint ache and headache.

Prostate cancer is the second most common type of cancer among men in the United States, behind skin cancer, and usually occurs in older men. In 2009, an estimated 192,000 new cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed and about 27,000 men died from the disease, according to the National Cancer Institute.