Russia faced with shortage of anti-cancer drugs

The Russian associations of cancer patients have called on the European Coalition of Cancer Patients and the Russian Ministry of Health to conduct additional talks with US pharma major Bristol-Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY), to continue the supplies of some of the company’s anticancer drugs to the Russian market, reports The Pharma Letter’s local correspondent.

BMS has recently decided to stop trials of its antitumor drug Opdivo (nivolumab) in Russia and withdraw the already launched drug from the market. Thus, hundreds of patients in Russia may remain without the needed medicine.

This has been recently confirmed by representatives of patients’ community in Russia. Olga Badson-Chernyak, head of the public organization "Cancer is curable" in a letter to the Russian Minister of Health Mikhail Murashko, said that, due to the decision of BMS, patients were left without some necessary vital drugs and in some cases remained "without a chance for any therapy to prolong life."