Summary

This campaign is for a close friend in Bangalore, India. Innovative medicines requiring billions of dollars of R&D expenditure put most of the new cancer therapies completely out of reach of even patients who have good economic means. Patient access is still a huge issue across the world.

The cost of just 1 cycle of medication is over $15,000 USD.

Note: Grateful to F&F who will match your contribution $ to $ upto $50,000 USD.

Detailed note from patient below

I am Usha. I first beat cancer in my twenties but am in the middle of my second battle several years later undergoing treatment for metastatic triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) since 2022. It has been a very very difficult journey to say the least with devastating side effects. I've had setbacks and yet I'm lucky. I'm very positive and I shall conquer this beast.

I have undergone 5 lines of chemo/ immunotherapy and 52 sessions so far. Initially everything would work and then stop working because of the mutating nature of TNBC. I had next gen sequencing done at an exorbitant cost. It came back with somatic TP53 mutation which didn’t help my oncologist who was expecting a mutation that he could target with a biological drug/targeted therapy.

Recently, my oncologist informed me of a drug called Trodelvy. He said that it would be perfect for my case but it is not available in India. Most oncologists in India do not even mention it to patients due to the heavy financial burden. With extreme difficulty, I have navigated access (import) to the drug and with the help of a few friends and family gathered funds for the initial cycle but I cannot sustain the following treatment. Me and my spouse have had to forego successful careers to rightfully focus on my health; consequently my private insurance will not even cover a fraction of the cost which is $15,000 USD per cycle.

Trodelvy has helped the majority of stage 4, TNBC patients achieve no evidence of active disease and remain stable in maintenance.

Help me beat cancer and I am in turn helping other patients navigate access to innovative medicines. Thank you

*Name altered to protect patient privacy (thanks for your understanding).