AURORA, Colo. — The drugs many people need to treat their cancer are in short supply.
Drug shortages have impacted the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus for years, but it's never been this serious, according to Cindy O'Bryant, a clinical pharmacy professor at the CU Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences.
"This is a big issue," O'Bryant said.
Finding out you have cancer can come as a shock. Finding out the medication you'll need to treat that cancer is in short supply can feel like a one-two punch.
"We want to treat our patients and we want to treat them really with the best medicine we have," O'Bryant said. "And when those are not available, we're kind of pushed into a corner and really have to begin making decisions that we don't want to make."
O'Bryant said that drug shortages in the United States are nothing new. The country has dealt with them on some level since the 2000s, but they've never been this bad, she said.
"We're really at a point now where we're at the highest number of drug shortages across all different disease types, not just oncology," O'Bryant said.
Survey results just released from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network found that 89% of 28 large cancer centers nationwide reported that at least one drug to treat cancer, its side effects or symptoms was in short supply.
O'Bryant isn't surprised.
"But we have some medications that are really vital for treating our leukemias and lymphomas that have been on shortage since the fall of 2023," O'Bryant said. "And we're really having to think about how we treat our patients, who is going to get medication, who may not get medication if we're not able to obtain supply."
O'Bryant said they'll ration when they can or stretch out the time between doses. In some cases, CU Anschutz will connect patients to facilities that have the drugs they need or switch them to a similar drug when possible.
"It's scary, right? You think about it from just being an adult who has cancer. But some of these drugs are used in our pediatric malignancies," O'Bryant said. "It really, for some patients, is life or death."
So, what causes these shortages?
O'Bryant said one problem is that these medications are often generic and cheap, so companies don't want to make them because they don't make as much money from them. Not many manufacturers are making the drugs, so if one maker goes offline or stops production of that drug altogether, it becomes a big problem.
"When you have thousands of patients across the country who are all needing access to these medications, even those small delays can be problematic," O'Bryant said.
Work is being done in Colorado and around the country to counter the production problems and stop these drug shortages at the source. The Biden administration and Congress have been working to tackle this issue, and O'Bryant said patient advocacy groups have helped to shine a light on the issue, keeping it in the spotlight.
"That's our goal, if we can prevent them," O'Bryant said. "That's where we would like to be."
However, work to tackle this problem could take years. Until it is, O'Bryant worries it'll be patients who pay the price.
"So will we get there? Hopefully. Will we get there tomorrow? No," O'Bryant said. "This is going to be years in the process which is not great news for anyone that's involved – patient, healthcare provider."
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