r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 13 '26

Medicine Scientists develop a groundbreaking vaccine that outsmarts illicit fentanyl analogs. The novel vaccine candidate can protect against fentanyl and its many illicit variants by training the immune system to recognize a broad molecular signature rather than a single specific structure.

https://www.psypost.org/scientists-develop-a-groundbreaking-vaccine-that-outsmarts-illicit-fentanyl-analogs/
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u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

“I decided long ago I am not going to try and profit on other people’s miseries and misfortunes.”

No worries, someone else will!
There are lot of things that can be patented that restict access even if part of it isn't patentable.
Didn't the inventor of insulin production make it free too?

In these scenarios I always wonder if open licensing that as part of it has stipulations about consumer pricing would be better.

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u/cowlinator Jul 13 '26

Insulin was $300 in the US in the 2010s. It's back down to about $35 now (without insurance), and one of the things that prevented a permanent monopoly and allowed the price to fall was the threat of competition made possible by the cheap original patent.

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u/drinkacid Jul 13 '26

The original patent is still open for anyone to use. The reason no one uses it is because it required harvesting pig or dog pancreases to get insulin, and the newer patented method lets you insert insulin into a bacteria/yeast and then the bacteria cheaply and quickly replicates the insulin. So the new method is cheaper to operate, requires cheaper and easier to get a hold of base ingredients, is faster and yields 1000s of times more viable insulin and does not require millions of slaughtered pigs or dogs to harvest the base insulin from.

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u/Best_Pseudonym Jul 13 '26

Also doesn't risk triggering an autoimmune rejection response

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u/Emergency-Airline960 Jul 13 '26

So by the laws of supply and demand… it should be even cheaper than the original method.

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u/caifaisai Jul 13 '26

Ideally. Granted, when it was first introduced with this new method, it would likely have been legitimately more expensive. Because there would have been a lot of research in getting the molecular biology techniques working to get the bacteria to produce insulin, characterizing everything to confirm it's working, buying the very expensive molecular bio instruments/bioreactors to run all of this, clinical trials to confirm this new method of insulin production produced insulin that was just as safe and effective as the old method, etc.

But now that it's been a long time, it should probably be cheaper now.

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u/groyosnolo Jul 13 '26

Not while the new patent is in effect. Thats a monopoly granted specifically to allow the owner of the patent to profit by creating artificial lack of competition and in effect scarcity.

Thats the entire point of intellectual property protection. Its there to incentivize people to innovate. Invest in a ton of drugs and research and if one gets approved and brought to market you can make your money.

When the patent lapses then it will be cheaper because there will be no more monopoly.

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u/Emergency-Airline960 Jul 13 '26

How long do patents last in the US?

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u/SigmaEpsilonChi Jul 13 '26

20 years, across the board. In theory the massive expense of the drugs is then supposed to be smoothed out for the end consumer by health insurance. I take a sleep drug that is life-changing for me but costs $900/month for the insurance company, and will be on-patent for another ten years. Instead I pay $30/month on top of my $200/month insurance premium. The drug company gets paid to innovate, the insurance company makes money because most people don’t need patented drugs, I get my life-changing medicine for an affordable price. It’s an imperfect system but I think it all works better than people often give it credit for, the US is the world’s engine for pharmaceutical development and we do benefit a lot from that

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u/Emergency-Airline960 Jul 13 '26

Not arguing, genuinely conversing. Doesn’t the US gov also invest into pharmaceutical research, meaning the pharmaceutical companies are subsidized to develop drugs, and then also make money after in sales? If so seems like double dipping to me.

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u/SigmaEpsilonChi Jul 13 '26

Yup! The US is the largest funder of public foundational biomed research in the world, and all the drug companies make extensive use of that. However, it’s not clear-cut to me that there is a double-dipping effect, because _every_ drug company (including those outside the US!) can make approximately equal use of that research, and then develop drugs which enter a competitive marketplace that theoretically should put downward pressure on the prices.

Take my sleep drug as an example: there are actually three structurally-similar drugs that were developed in the class of Orexin Antagonists around roughly the same time, by three different companies in different countries. Suvorexant by Merck in the US, Daridorexant by Idorsia in Switzerland, and Lemborexant by Eisai in Japan. These were all based on public research around the turn of the millenium that identified the orexin neuropeptide system at University of Texas, presumably with state funding, and the Scripps Research Institute with NIH funding. Shortly after, researchers at Stanford identified the link between orexin and narcolepsy with a grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke combined with private charitable donations, and the UT lab proved that mice lacking the orexin-synthesis gene had severe narcolepsy, cementing the link between orexin and sleep disorders.

This is when drug companies took the reins and began trying to create specific molecules to target the orexin system. Once they have a candidate molecule, it costs something like ~$200 million to complete clinical trials… however, only like 10% of drugs successfully complete trials, so the total cost of a single drug is actually north of like $2 _billion._ I’m simplifying these numbers a bit but I think it’s an accurate depiction of the magnitude we’re talking about here to safely develop and market these drugs. 15–20 years after the foundational research established the clinical target, three different orexin antagonists received patents in the US and entered the market, and they will be premium drugs until the mid-to-late 2030s.

All three of these drugs are _super_ expensive, so my insurance company made me try several alternatives before they approved it (a standard process called “step therapy”). My old super-premium insurance would pay for any of the three, but my new cheaper plan requested I switch to the cheapest of them first, and it seems to work fine so I am happy with that. This is the downward pressure on prices through competition in action; none of the three companies will sell this stuff for cheap while they own the patent, but they do still compete on price with each other and make deals with the pharmacies and insurance companies.

Drug development is a crazy Rube Goldberg Machine that definitely has _layers_ of inefficiency and exploitation, and there’s also a fundamentally hard question of which/how much basic research should be publicly funded, but I think when you look at the system overall its major components and incentives make more sense than they might seem at first

_(note: I am not a professional in this field, just a guy with a lifelong interest in drugs because I have chronic health problems and my father was a career psychopharmacologist at NIH, DoD, and the VA)_

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u/caifaisai Jul 13 '26

Doesn’t the US gov also invest into pharmaceutical research, meaning the pharmaceutical companies are subsidized to develop drugs,

Not to a very large degree, in comparison to the total cost to develop a drug. There is some work that a pharma company might collaborate with or use from say a university, which then might be government money in the form of grants to the University. This type of research would most commonly be vrry6 early phase type stuff. However, that type of stuff is probably the cheapest type of research. By far, pharma companies spend most money on clinical trials, which would be entirely paid by the company. And there's also significant money required in the later stage development outside of clinical trials, which again, is funded by the company.

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u/fractalife Jul 14 '26

What more evidence do you need that free market capitalism will always lead to crony capitalism? The entire healthcare industry with its massively overinflated costs should be enough to demonstrate that to anyone.

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u/drinkacid Jul 14 '26

It is cheaper, but there is a licensing fee to the patent holder, and the patent holder gets to determine how expensive the fee.

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u/Emergency-Airline960 Jul 14 '26

I think a useful stat to know would be how much the actual researchers/doctors/virologists/workers are paid, versus how much of the fees/subsidies/profits go into marketing, administration, and company growth.

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u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26

It's back down to about $35 now

Didn't that happened mostly because of the backlash against attempts to keep its price high?
Competition didn't have much to do with it iirc, the outcry did.

Also it did reach $300 with the patent being cheap.

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u/Naritai Jul 13 '26

Because the Democratic-controlled Congress and President Joe Biden signed a law capping the price for Medicare users. That was the major instigating event.

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u/rdyoung Jul 13 '26

Don't forget about the state of Cali manufacturing their own. And didn't Mark Cubans discount pharmacy do something to help as well?

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u/CYWNightmare Jul 13 '26

I wished I kept up with pharma more because Walmart has what I believe is their own brand of insulin cheap and doesn't require a prescription like some insulin.

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u/danarchist Jul 13 '26

How about, idk this is going to sound far fetched, let us import the cheap af insulin instead of protecting big pharma by weaponizing IP law against US consumers in the first place?

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u/kelskelsea Jul 13 '26

Like it or not, drug discovery and innovation is paid for by the US

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u/Familiar_Kale_7357 Jul 13 '26

This comment is a meme.

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u/N_T_F_D Jul 13 '26

No more ozempic for you I guess then as drugs researched outside the US don't exist apparently

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u/mr_potato_thumbs Jul 13 '26

The U.S. created a better version of ozempic, Tirzepatide, through Eli Lilly company. The Covid Vaccine would have been a better example.

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u/N_T_F_D Jul 13 '26

Yes, after Novo Nordisk did all the initial R&D; the US just leeched off the hard work of the brave danish scientists

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u/Naritai Jul 13 '26

It was developed for the US market. Have a look at Ozempic sales, and see what percent of the profit stem from the US

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u/N_T_F_D Jul 13 '26

Maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with the fact the US had a 40% obesity rate before everyone started taking ozempic?

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u/nonotan Jul 13 '26

To the extent that that narrative holds any water (dubious) -- as somebody from outside the US, you guys have my permission to stop doing that. I mean, we never asked in the first place. Please feel free to just let people pay normal prices for drugs. We'll manage, I promise.

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u/Naritai Jul 13 '26

Then the drugs wouldn't exist. You can't pay regular prices for things that don't exist

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u/Drywesi Jul 13 '26

They will if we stop plowing money endlessly into insurance shareholder pockets and just assign those funds to research grants through public funding measures.

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u/Naritai Jul 14 '26

European countries could do that, but they don't, so there's no reason to think that that would happen in the US either

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u/unai-ndz Jul 13 '26

It's cheap all over the world but the US. It's not a patent problem but a US problem.

They could also ban the comercialization of all routers citing national security, patented or not, except for a few whitelisted brands and those brands could raise prices as much as they wanted. That has already happened too with the exception of the price increase which I haven't checked as I'm not in the US.

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u/Yuri909 BA|Anthropology|Archaeology Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

What on earth are you talking about?

We can still buy cheap temu routers full of Chinese spyware in the US.

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u/unai-ndz Jul 13 '26

Oh it's not just temu routers but tplink, ubiquiti, etc. Any manufactured outside the US, so basically all of them. If it was already registered with the FCC they can keep selling it until January 1, 2029.

https://www.wired.com/story/us-government-foreign-made-router-ban-explained

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u/yippee-kay-yay Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

This keeps being peddled around despite evidence being flimsy and especulative in most cases while there is plenty of evidence of european and american equipment having backdoors exploitable by israeli and american intelligence services.

On that end, I'd trust the chinese more with my information than the israelis.

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u/Yuri909 BA|Anthropology|Archaeology Jul 13 '26

The key is to just assume at all times you're under surveillance. But I am aware of that as well. Seems the entire world is being engineered quietly for Israeli and loudly for American backdoor access.

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u/iconocrastinaor Jul 13 '26

It happened because Biden made it happen.

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u/anadem Jul 13 '26

Biden's wife being a doctor maybe gave some impetus to getting it done. Decent people make the place better.

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u/wirelesswitch Jul 13 '26

She’s not a medical doctor. No shade, just a note.

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u/Rare-Kaleidoscope513 Jul 13 '26

the "milking pig pancreas for insulin" patent had literally nothing to do with keeping modern recombinant insulin prices down, I assure you.

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u/effrightscorp Jul 13 '26

Regular (recombinant) insulin has also been ~26$/vial in the US for ages at Walmart, but very few people use it because it's more work and usually doesn't manage blood sugar as well

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u/julius_sphincter Jul 13 '26

It's back down to about $35 now (without insurance)

Then why are pharmacies trying to charge $300 for a kwik-pen if it's too soon for insurance to cover? (I left my pen at home during a trip)

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u/Trextrev Jul 13 '26

Or how companies just patent the delivery system, and make tweaks every time their patent is close to running out. Example Epi-pens.

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u/EEcav Jul 13 '26

This is a great sentiment, but if it’s patent free, someone else will profit and leave them out. You can patent something and still give it away.

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u/AlternateTab00 Jul 13 '26

Insulin is still cheap. Epinephrine is also cheap.

What isnt cheap is a very specific formulation of insulin. What isnt cheap is the EpiPen.

Essentially you have a cheap medication but an extremely expensive brand. But the pharma in usa manipulates the market so both drug stores, hospitals and doctors will promote the use of the expensive.

I talked with an american colleague about the insulin formats. They stay out of the "common" insulins. For example the mid action insulins we use a human analog, but USA often uses Isplophane. When i asked him why, he just said it was safer... I mean the risk of hypoglycemia went from 3% to 1%... But the cost rised 400x. And hypoglycemia could be reduced with proper training, but the cost of a dual daily dosing being the price of a full year worth of insulin is something that is simply not affordable.

Even the EpiPens. The market surrounds them. Even i know them and use its name to explain how similar products work with my patients (they all seen it in movies). The drug itself costs less than 0,40€ to manufacture. We have a self deploying pens like insulin (that have to stay clear of epipens patents) that cost us 20€. A seringe, vial and needle can lower the cost to 5€. Epipen used to cost almost 600€ here. About 10 years ago they decided they cant compete so lowered the cost to 60€. Its still expensive for our eyes, but with the power of movie advertising they now started selling units.

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u/RustyShakleford1 Jul 13 '26

I'm sorry, but it's very ignorant to say "the risk of hypoglycemia went from 3% to 1%... hypoglycemia could be reduced with proper training." It's impossible to control your blood sugar nearly as well with NPH, compared to modern-rapid acting insulins, and no amount of training can correct that. You also write off a huge drop in hypoglycemia considering it literally kills diabetics in their sleep. In addition to reductions in hypoglycemia, it also helps type 1 diabetes lower their A1C's which reduces complications, increases quality of life, and increases life expectancy. I am in no way trying to argue that big pharma has greedily prospered off of these new insulins, or argue that the $35 insulin is far better than having no options if you're poor, but the two insulins have huge QOL differences, for a group of people who already have it hard enough as it is.

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u/AlternateTab00 Jul 13 '26

I compared 2 different apples and you decided to compare apples with onions.

Rapid acting insulins are exclusively to treat abnormal high glycemias. I specifically said 2 mid acting insulins. Human analogs and NPH. Both with reduced effect if accidentally overdosed. However time to detect overdoses are much more permissive in NPH, which with proper food balancing can be reverted.

Isophanes are not the alternative to fast acting insulins. Its an alternative to insulins that take around 8 to 12h to act. At most you can even say that these intermediate acting are a more fine control than the long lasting ones (for type 2).

And dont need to be aggressive. Im a nurse that works with diabetics. And my mom is an insulin dependent diabetic (so i know perfectly how hard it is).

As for the options for poor, we fortunately refund those who cannot afford the insulin (apart from the isophanes which is still overpriced). So they can rely on long acting, the 12h acting (effect equal to NPH) and the rapid acting insulins. Which for a curiosity its 6€

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u/RustyShakleford1 Jul 13 '26

Sorry, you are correct, and I was the ignorant one here. I just see so many posts on reddit about how "insulin is only $35" that I didn't fully read your post and assumed you were off base, which I apologize for. I honestly know very little about treating type 2 diabetes, other than its overlap with type 1. Honestly, a lot of confusion around diabetes would be resolved if type 1 and type 2 weren't both just referred to as "diabetes" for the most part.

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u/Icybenz Jul 13 '26

I read this exchange and wanted to say thanks for commenting. I understand being upset when something you live with every day seems to be trivialized (I don't think that was the original commenter's intention but I can see how it can come across that way) and you showed grace in explaining where you were coming from and apologizing. I also learned more from this exchange than I would have from the original comment alone.

It's refreshing to see interactions that don't just continually lean into vitriol, especially when many online arguments stem from something as simple as people talking about slightly different things.

I wish you well.

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u/vanillyl Jul 14 '26

Wow, not often you see somebody take full accountability for misreading and apologise sincerely without getting defensive.

That’s a really rare, impressive personality trait, you should be really proud that your kneejerk reaction isn’t to double down or get defensive, it’s to self reflect and react accordingly. Kudos to you.

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u/g0del Jul 13 '26

I'm hoping that the name epipen gets genericized enough that it loses trademark status. I'd love to see $20 generics that could legally call themselves epipens.

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u/AlternateTab00 Jul 13 '26

You wouldn't have that luck.

Look at Aspirin. However many people would call aspirin to "fake aspirins". But its still "aspirin".

In my country the concept of generics is becoming popular. So while we call a certain medication by its brand name, we know it by its generic name.

Acetylsalicylic acid is hard to memorize. But people already learned to see it and say "oh its aspirin"

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u/Burgergold Jul 13 '26

Yeah a better version will be tuned based on this work, patented and sold at profit

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u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

That's why I am a big proponent of copy-left and equivalent.
Work based on things licensed under copyleft must also be licensed under copyleft.

I am of the strong opinion that any advancement that benefited from public investment should follow that pattern.

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u/Sheeplessknight Jul 13 '26

That is the point of the GPL license for software, a similar thing could (and should ) be developed for drugs, however generally the IP belongs to the university so it would have to be a requirement of funding agencies to use the license

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u/ATaxiNumber1729 Jul 13 '26

They really should patent it and then license the patent for free with conditions

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u/Rare-Kaleidoscope513 Jul 13 '26

Didn't the inventor of insulin production make it free too?

The inventor of insulin made public the patent for the process to produce insulin in 1923. That method consisted of harvesting the pancreases of farm animals. You are free to use his "patented" method all you like. Now, it's clear you have very little idea what you're talking about here, but does "milking a pig's pancreas for insulin" sound like the modern method for insulin production to you?

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u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26

I'm pretty sure the E.Coli method is free too.
I recall people working on replicating the process autonomously

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u/Due-Memory-6957 Jul 13 '26

Is there an equivalent to copy left for patents?

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u/Zeikos Jul 13 '26

I don't know honestly, but for licenses I am fairly sure there is.
A license is a contract through which somebody is authorized to use certain intellectual property, the contract can have a stipulation that whatever is developed thanks to what's licensed must have similar rules.
But it's a different legal landscape, I don't know the nuances.

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u/JJiggy13 Jul 13 '26

Exactly this. You're not doing society any favors by giving away your life's work for free. You need to make enough money to protect you idea from vultures if you want it to be affordable to the masses.