With the drug, doctors say they can cure nearly 90 percent of the roughly 3,500 American children and teens diagnosed with this cancer each year.
Last year, there were a record 267 new drug shortages reported, and most remain unresolved. The inability to get crucial medicines has disrupted chemotherapy, surgery and care for patients with infections and pain. At least 15 deaths since 2010 have been blamed on the shortages.
Specialty groups representing researchers and doctors who care for children with cancer say the methotrexate shortage began in December when production declined. That drop resulted primarily from Ben Venue Laboratories Inc. temporarily closing its factory in Bedford, Ohio, in November after federal inspectors said the company had not been properly maintaining equipment or promptly addressing defective product batches and sterility problems.
Besides making methotrexate, the factory was the sole source for Johnson & Johnson’s Doxil, a drug widely used for breast and ovarian cancer that’s not been available for new patients for months.
Each of the remaining four manufacturers of methotrexate has had some type of production problem, and it’s been unclear when the next batches of the drug will be sent to wholesalers and hospitals, according to Erin R. Fox, manager of the University of Utah Drug Information Service, which tracks national drug shortages.
Late Monday, the heads of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, American Cancer Society of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Children’s Oncology Group, a nationwide network of researchers, wrote to top executives at four U.S. makers of the drug pleading for help.
The cancer groups urged the drugmakers to “take all necessary steps to rapidly increase access’’ to the preservative-free version of methotrexate, which is needed for children because the preservatives can be dangerous for them.
“Doctors and pharmacists are scrounging for supply with very little luck and are beginning to ration the remaining supply. It is not an understatement to say that this is creating a panic in the childhood cancer community,’’ the letters state.
