Good afternoon.
YM Biosciences is an early stage cancer product development company, which was founded in 1994. We are currently developing new therapeutic products that we have licensed from the Universities of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Dalhousie.
Our most advanced product is nimotuzumab, a biologically derived and produced molecule that is being developed for several underserved cancer indications. The lead indication for nimotuzumab is pediatric pontine glioma, which affects fewer than 50 Canadian children each year. In early studies, nimotuzumab has been shown to improve the quality and length of survival for affected patients.
I'm here today because my company is concerned that CDR, given its history to this point, would reject this Canadian-developed product and deny Canadian patients access to this potentially life-prolonging therapy.
A large part of my job is to identify the financial resources that are necessary to bring exciting new health discoveries to market. Often these development efforts are in partnership with leading multinational pharmaceutical companies or through venture capital investments. That job is made more difficult when venture funds and corporate licensing executives observe that the Canadian marketplace provides little or no market access for innovative biologic products as a direct result of CDR recommendations.
If Canada is to realize the full return on our investments in our universities and programs such as the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Genome Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, we must ensure that the fruits of those investments can reach Canadian patients.
To encourage further investment and development of innovative health inventions, Canada, through the CDR review, must recognize the value of innovation. In the United Kingdom, for example, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, NICE, a common comparator to CDR, explicitly takes into account the innovative nature of technology and wider societal interests. NICE also works with a citizens council in making reimbursement decisions on new medicines.
Incorporating these elements of the NICE system into CDR would begin to demonstrate that the Canadian system can accommodate the needs of vulnerable patient populations and that it values the innovation of breakthrough therapies.