Dose Arithmetic: How Many Capsules Would a Medicine Need?
If a medicine needed a manufacturing step in orbit, how many capsule missions a year would it take, and what would they add to each dose?
Chapter summary
fewer than intuition suggests for small-dose drugs, many more for antibodies, and in both cases the cost per dose is affordable for a high-priced medicine.
Key takeaways
- 1
Using pembrolizumab as a reference, about 2.57 million doses a year at 200 mg implies roughly 513 kg of drug substance.
- 2
If 10% of that needed a space step, and each capsule returned 5 kg, the medicine would need about 10 missions a year; at $8.1 million each that adds about $320 per dose from that share, about 2.8% of a $11,500 list price.
- 3
For a small-molecule drug at 10 mg a dose, the same capsule supplies far more patients.
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