Cost of tumour killing liquid

Merlin5 · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:18

Was just chatting to the parents of a student of mine. Parents are both medical consultants. Wife works at the royal free in radioactive substances and treatment of tumours. She told me something which blew my head off. How much do you think it costs for just 2 spoonfuls of liquid in a syringe to kill off tumours instead of chemotherapy? Closest number gets a cookie. It won't be an oreo.

NO HOTLINKING!

Strife212 · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:19

£5000

Dano · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:20

Cost to manufacture or cost to the NHS?

Megahurtz400 · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:20

36,000 quid?

VaderDSL · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:21

Cost to manufacture after R&D? £10
Cost to NHS? £2500

arknor · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:22

£27,938

Craig1981 · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:23

It'll either by stupidly high or stupidly low.

I'll buck the trend and say.... £5?

Merlin5 · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:27

Ok a clue. So, far too high and too low.

Glaucus · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:29

Jambo · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:29

What do you mean instead of chemotherapy?

It depends on the chemotherapy drugs used. Anything from a few hundred quid to £10k probably.

arknor · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:29

Merlin5 said:
Ok a clue. So, far too high and too low.

$1000 for a box in america :confused:

Participant · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:30

£300

aproctor · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:31

£120

J-FRO · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:31

When will you just tell us?

Redz · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:32

£2.50 to manufacture
£25,000 cost to NHS

Merlin5 · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:34

Ok, no cookies, sorry.

It's sixteen grand the NHS pay for, for just two spoonfuls of liquid. :eek:

She had a patient with a tumour or tumours. She said this liquid is normally used as a last resort for people that really don't want the discomfort of chemo. The liquid completely destroyed the tumour very fast. She said the prohibitive cost was mostly due to the the research that goes into it.

Glaucus · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:37

Research costs hundreads of millions, ontop of that many drugs fail at different stages of research/testing it's an expensive business.

Tefal · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:37

presumably though it's also only useful on very specific cancers and even then not as effective as chemo.

Castiel · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:37

Do you mean injectable liquid alkali alloy based-tumour thermal ablation therapy.

Merlin5 · 21 Feb 2011 at 21:39

Tefal said:
presumably though it's also only useful on very specific cancers and even then not as effective as chemo.

Well she said something about the patient having to have the right antibodies in the first place for the liquid to cling to or something like that, so yeah, it's not a one size fits all solution. But it's better than chemo for the right patients.