The article left out a number of very good scientific reasons why lucentis and avastin are not bioequivalent and should not be subsituted.
I found it especially misleading that they used anecdotal evidence to claim that the cheaper drug is equivalent in function and safety.
That said, Genentech is on the wrong side of the PR angle here and unfortunately for them, some internal documents got exposed which make them seem less than angelic here. If the cost differential of producing the drugs really is small, then they don't have a strong position, because it makes them appear as if they are using one of the drugs as a profit center to fund future R&D.
Anyway, the article really glosses over stuff, but you'd need to spend about 5-7 years getting a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry, plus working in industry for a few years before you understand the business and science of what genentech does.
they are using one of the drugs moreso than another as a profit center.
IE, given no other constraints, I'd expect a pharma to distribute its R&D cost over its drug profit centers weighted by the drug's profit margin, and that all the drug's profit margins would be roughly equal: naively, I'd expect them to raise the price of Avastin and lower the price of Lucentis, assuming the costs of producing them truly are similar.
The reality is, likely there are proprietary reasons we're not privy to that causes the cost differential. They could be technical (maybe it does cause much, much more to produce Lucentis), or the could be business (maybe increasing the price of Avastin could cause it to sell poorly against another drug from a competitor)
I found it especially misleading that they used anecdotal evidence to claim that the cheaper drug is equivalent in function and safety.
That said, Genentech is on the wrong side of the PR angle here and unfortunately for them, some internal documents got exposed which make them seem less than angelic here. If the cost differential of producing the drugs really is small, then they don't have a strong position, because it makes them appear as if they are using one of the drugs as a profit center to fund future R&D.
Anyway, the article really glosses over stuff, but you'd need to spend about 5-7 years getting a PhD in pharmaceutical chemistry, plus working in industry for a few years before you understand the business and science of what genentech does.