Abstract 1701P
Background
High treatment prices of new cancer drugs are a global public health challenge to patients and healthcare systems. Policymakers in the US and Europe are debating reforms to drug pricing. The objective was to assess whether drug efficacy or epidemiological characteristics (prevalence, incidence, mortality) explain the gap in treatment prices between cancer and non-cancer drugs in the US, Germany, and Switzerland.
Methods
This cross-sectional study identified all new drugs approved in the US, Germany, and Switzerland between 2011 and 2020. Drug efficacy was extracted from the pivotal trials, drug prices from public and commercial databases, and epidemiological characteristics from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 study. We used regression models to explain drug prices with drug efficacy and epidemiological characteristics (prevalence, incidence, mortality).
Results
The cohort included 181 drugs, including 68 (37.5%) drugs approved for treatment of cancer. A significant negative correlation was found between incidence/prevalence and treatment prices, and a significant positive correlation was observed between mortality and treatment prices for both, cancer and non-cancer drugs. A significant association between relative drug efficacy and treatment prices of drugs was observed, however, less pronounced for cancer drugs. Our regression estimates indicated that after adjusting for efficacy and epidemiological characteristics, cancer drugs were on average approximately three times more expensive compared to non-cancer drugs in all three countries, indicating a cancer premium. Our model explained 72% of the variance in observed prices (R2).
Conclusions
Drug pricing reforms should target the cancer premium to improve access of patients to cancer drugs as well as to achieve equity across the different therapeutic areas and sustainability in the health care systems.
Clinical trial identification
Editorial acknowledgement
Legal entity responsible for the study
K.N. Vokinger.
Funding
Swiss Cancer Research Foundation, Swiss National Science Foundation.
Disclosure
All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.
Resources from the same session
1579P - Gender differences and worse metastatic survival outcomes in young adult patients with oesophagogastric cancer: 12-year data from a Czech comprehensive cancer center
Presenter: Tomás Sokop
Session: Poster session 22
1580P - Early onset oesophageal adenocarcinoma: A separate biological entity?
Presenter: Dharmesh Valand
Session: Poster session 22
1581P - Total neoadjuvant chemotherapy with FOLFIRINOX regimen in patients with resectable locally advanced gastric and gastroesophageal junction cancer
Presenter: Maria Sedova
Session: Poster session 22
1582P - Gastroesophageal adenocarcinoma in young adults: Retrospective analysis of clinical and molecular features
Presenter: Daniel Acosta Eyzaguirre
Session: Poster session 22
1583P - Intraperitoneal chemotherapy for peritoneal metastases of gastric origin: A systematic review and meta-analysis
Presenter: Niels Guchelaar
Session: Poster session 22
1585P - The impact of platinum-induced peripheral neuropathy (PN) in first-line treatment on PN and efficacy in second-line paclitaxel (PTX)-based chemotherapy for unresectable advanced gastric cancer (AGC): A prospective observational multicenter study - IVY study
Presenter: Yoshiyasu Kono
Session: Poster session 22
1587P - Analysis of survival outcomes according to start timing of adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with gastric cancer: A retrospective nationwide cohort study
Presenter: Tae-Hwan Kim
Session: Poster session 22
1588P - Analysis of risk factors of anastomotic leakage after minimally invasive esophagectomy with circular cervical anastomosis
Presenter: ming lu
Session: Poster session 22