Now, cancer patients get access to a cheaper alternative drug

At the central government-run Tata Memorial Hospital, the medical oncology team added a tenth of the regular dosing of an immunotherapy drug called nivolumab to the treatment plan of 76 patients with metastatic head and neck cancer.

- Malathy lyer

Mumbai: This group got the low-dose immunotherapy drug at Rs 25,000 per month as against eight times the cost of the regular dosing.

With low-dose nivolumab, they also underwent the regular chemotherapy regimen meant for their advanced disease. This group was compared with another group of 75 similar patients who only got chemotherapy. If the median overall survival was 6.7 months in the second group, it was 10.1 months in the first group.