{"id":4256,"date":"2026-02-13T07:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T07:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/4256\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T07:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T07:32:11","slug":"abusive-pharma-patents-roches-mab-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/4256\/","title":{"rendered":"Abusive pharma patents: Roche\u2019s \u201cmAb\u201d empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer, Roche followed the same playbook for another of its cancer drugs<\/a>, Lunsumio. As of early November, it still has not appeared back on the list of medicines reimbursed by the basic insurance scheme.<\/p>\n

The \u201cmAb\u201d empire<\/p>\n

Thanks to the barricade of patents it has erected over more than 30 years, Roche has secured a very dominant position in the field of HER2+ breast-cancer treatments, and more generally in treatments involving monoclonal antibodies (\u201cmAbs\u201d).<\/p>\n

These therapies are based on decades of academic research and have been backed by hundreds of millions in public funds<\/a>. They are vital for many people and could have been supplemented by more affordable biosimilars following the expiry of the primary patents. However, they are often still inaccessible and incur significant additional costs in the healthcare sector. In Switzerland, this practice has a direct impact on the level of insurance premiums. In its latest report on medicines, the health insurer Helsana estimates the potential savings from using already approved biosimilars more frequently at CHF 1.2 billion between 2020 and 2023 alone.<\/p>\n

If Switzerland were to actively intervene against monopoly abuses that delay the introduction of new biosimilars, this potential for savings would increase drastically. The authorities in countries hosting large pharmaceutical companies, such as Switzerland, must, as a matter of urgency, speak out against the abusive proliferation of secondary patents on medicines. As a member of the European Patent Convention, Switzerland could request a more meticulous examination of patent applications to limit the numbers of unmerited patents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The U.S. government’s current efforts to lower the price of patented drugs may well produce only limited results, as negotiations with pharma corporations focus on the official list price \u2013 a fictitious reference pricing used for international comparisons \u2013 rather than the actual real prices paid by health systems and patients. Worse still, the price of medicines in Europe and in Switzerland may increase in return if pharma companies follow through on their threats<\/a>. Meanwhile, abuses of the patent system and the grip of pharma giants on entire segments of the sector will just carry on if nothing is done.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This summer, Roche followed the same playbook for another of its cancer drugs, Lunsumio. As of early November,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4257,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[207,1000,3713,3709,3710,3711,3708,3712,337,3714,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-4256","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-roche","8":"tag-breast-cancer","9":"tag-drug-prices","10":"tag-entresto","11":"tag-evergreening","12":"tag-monopoly","13":"tag-patent-abuse","14":"tag-patents","15":"tag-perjeta","16":"tag-pharmaceuticals","17":"tag-public-health","18":"tag-roche"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}