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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Amgen Recovering Nicely From Anemia Drug Woes

If you’re a patient in need of treatment or services, recent developments in the Valley healthcare scene mean good news. Bioengineering giant Amgen has made some advances in the development of drugs to treat low numbers of blood platelets and osteoporosis in postmenopausal women; a Granada Hills franchise offers personalized assisted living placement free of charge to seniors with health problems, and, lastly, a partnership between two cancer treatment groups means that patients in Glendale and surrounding areas have more medical options available to them. It’s been more than a year since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ decided to limit how physicians would be reimbursed for prescribing Amgen’s anemia medications Aranesp and Epogen. So detrimental was the move to the company,the drugs were Amgen’s flagship products,that it soon announced plans to cut as much as 14 percent of its staff. Now that the FDA has approved Nplate, Amgen’s platelet producing drug, and a study suggests that Denosumab, a drug it developed to treat postmenopausal osteoporosis, is effective, Amgen appears to have made a full recovery from its setback last summer. “The daily fear of experiencing a serious bleeding episode can be emotionally stressful and extremely difficult… We welcome the addition of new treatment options,” stated Craig Conway, executive director of the Platelet Disorder Support Association, about Nplate. Despite FDA approval of the drug, Amgen plans to study Nplate’s long-term efficacy and safety for the next three years. In addition, the Thousand Oaks company will launch the Network of Experts Understanding and Supporting Nplate and Patients (NEXUS), a program designed to provide comprehensive access, support and education for patients, their caregivers and healthcare providers, according to the company. NEXUS is part of the risk evaluation and mitigation strategy developed by Amgen in partnership with the FDA to assure safe use of Nplate while minimizing risk, Amgen explained. Through the program, eligible patients who are uninsured, underinsured, or unable to afford insurance co-payments may receive reimbursement support and other assistance from Amgen. “Amgen is committed to advancing the discovery and development of new therapies for grievous illnesses where there is unmet medical need,” said Dr. Roger M. Perlmutter, executive vice president of Research and Development at Amgen. Perlmutter also discussed the results of the study on Denosumab, in which 7,800 women with osteoporosis were given the drug or a placebo to determine its effectiveness. The study found that women given Denosumab developed increased bone mass. The drug also appeared to reduce the risk of skeletal fractures in women with postmenopausal osteoporosis. “We are encouraged by the magnitude and consistency of the treatment effect and pleased with the safety results,” Perlmutter said. “We hope to have the opportunity to present the complete data set at the upcoming meeting of the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research in September.” Assisted Living In the San Fernando Valley, needy seniors in search of assisted living may receive help finding a home through Always Best Care Senior Services, a franchise of which is in Granada Hills. For no charge, the company matches seniors with an appropriate assisted living facility. “We try to match them up according to their budget,” explained Judea Serrano owner of the Granada Hills franchise. “Instead of taking care of (seniors) at home, we try to find a home for them where they can stay there and be taken care of 24/7 and provided three meals a day in a residence with five other residents.” The Granada Hills franchise has been open since March 2007. Serrano opened the franchise because she thought senior care was a huge market given the number of aging baby boomers. In addition, Serrano receives many referrals from seniors who depend on Social Security for income and find it difficult to find a residential care facility on a limited budget. “For a lot of them, there are facilities who will accept them, but they have to be on a waiting list to go into the low cost, assisted living facility,” Serrano said. She also includes a kind of concierge service for clients. “If they want to see the home, we personally take them on a tour, so they can see it for themselves before they decide which facility they want to go to,” she explained. Providing such services for free hasn’t left Serrano hurting for money. That’s because she has contracts with a number facilities, and those contracts don’t depend on her placing a certain amount of seniors in facilities. Serrano believes the facilities are willing to contract with her because she serves as a marketing vehicle of sorts for them. Serrano visits hospitals to meet prospective patients. Moreover, “We actually bring the client to their places.., and they like that,” she said. Cancer Treatment At Valley Radiotherapy Associates Medical Group Inc. in Glendale, cancer patients are the clients in question. To expand the services it provides, the group recently developed a partnership with Vantage Oncology in Manhattan Beach. The partnership will now be called Vantage Oncology Glendale Radiation Therapy Center. “The joint venture between Valley Radiotherapy Associates and Vantage Oncology will provide patients of Glendale with access to state-of-the-art diagnostic and radiation therapy services,” said Michael T. Fiore, CEO of Vantage Oncology. The center will be located in the Cancer Center building of Glendale Memorial Hospital. Technology upgrades to the cancer center have been made by Vantage and the remodeled cancer center is scheduled to open Sept. 2. Renovations include a remodeled front office and a new patient resource area in the main waiting room. Also, there will be two new consultation rooms for patients to privately meet with their physicians and discuss treatment options. The clinical area will include a station with a registered nurse. The dressing area will have lockers for patients, and an adjacent waiting area will provide patients with privacy as they prepare to be treated. The advanced technology featured in the center will allow physicians to precisely target tumors with greater doses of radiation, while keeping normal tissues from harm. Staff Reporter Nadra Kareem can be reached at 818-316-3124 or at [email protected] .

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