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In the remote forests of northern Sweden, Anders Svenningsson’s multiple sclerosis patients have benefited from a drug he’s been prescribing for the past eight years. It doesn’t require weekly injections, doesn’t leave patients feeling achy and feverish; and most important, halts their disease.
That drug, Rituxan—originally developed to treat cancer—has become Sweden’s most prescribed medicine for MS, in which the body attacks its own central nervous system. Swedish doctors have great freedom to prescribe treatments they believe are appropriate, but few MS patients elsewhere can get the drug. That’s because its maker, Roche Holding AG, has never tried to sell it for the disease. Instead, Roche this year introduced a nearly identical medication that it markets under a new name and at 10 times the cost.
In the remote forests of northern Sweden, Anders Svenningsson’s multiple sclerosis patients have benefited from a drug he’s been prescribing for the past eight years. It doesn’t require weekly injections, doesn’t leave patients feeling achy and feverish; and most important, halts their disease.
That drug, Rituxan—originally developed to treat cancer—has become Sweden’s most prescribed medicine for MS, in which the body attacks its own central nervous system. Swedish doctors have great freedom to prescribe treatments they believe are appropriate, but few MS patients elsewhere can get the drug. That’s because its maker, Roche Holding AG, has never tried to sell it for the disease. Instead, Roche this year introduced a nearly identical medication that it markets under a new name and at 10 times the cost.
