MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — WVU Medicine along with many hospitals and cancer centers across the country are dealing with shortages for generic cancer drugs.
A nationwide shortage of carboplatin and cisplatin is expected to last for several more months.
Dmitry Walker, PharmD, MS, is the Director for Pharmacy Oncology and Investigational Drug Services at WVU Medicine. He said some hospitals don’t have these drugs at all, which forces patients into alternative options.
“They’re not just conserving it for patients who need it most, they just don’t have it at all,” Walker said about the places who usually have these drugs.
The National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Best Practices Committee conducted a survey which found that 93% of U.S. cancer centers that were polled in the report currently have a shortage of carboplatin, and 70% have a shortage of cisplatin.
Cisplatin went on a shortage first, forcing more patients to be switched to carboplatin, which also started to experience shortages, according to Walker. Both drugs are generic and are relatively inexpensive.
Walker said WVU Medicine started seeing shortages for the cancer drugs starting in the beginning of 2023. He said it’s not that there’s a high demand for these drugs causing the shortages, but the supply is on a thin line with the demand that it becomes noticeable when something goes wrong, ultimately leading to the shortages.
“Multiple manufacturers are making it, there’s limited margins to be made, so the balance of how much is being produced is very close to what the demand is in our country,” Walker said.
Walker said a facility that was shipping out the drugs had halted that process due to the FDA finding issues with it. Other manufacturers then fell behind when trying to pick up the slack for those shipments.
More pharmacists and pharmacy technicians had to be hired at WVU to keep up with the demand.
“All they do is work directly with wholesalers and manufacturers,” said Walker. “Once there’s an issue in supply, they try to figure out direct shipments for the volumes that we need.”