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Short abstract

Drug exceptional access programs (DEAPs) in Canada to help address access gaps to pharmaceuticals. They entail circumventing the standard procedures which raises economical, social and political issues. This presentation helps understand DEAPs’ procedures and associated issues.

Long abstract

Drug exceptional access programs (DEAPs) in Canada to help address access gaps to pharmaceuticals. They entail circumventing the standard procedures which raises economical, social and political issues. This presentation helps understand DEAPs’ procedures and associated issues.

Recent pharmaceutical industry development towards immunotherapies, gene therapies and more broadly personalized medicine have led these drug exceptional access programs (DEAPs) to play a key role, allowing access to personalized treatments under conditions not yet approved, thus creating a form of parallel market. The programs and dynamics surrounding exceptional access to pharmaceuticals are under documented. How do these programs work in practice? What are the health and political issues generated by DEAPs in the era of gene therapies, precision medicine, and ultra-expensive therapies? Addressing these issues requires delving into the links between pharmaceutical exception programs and the new economic and scientific dynamics of pharmaceutical development.