Potential Solutions for Sustaining the Costs of Cancer Drugs

Abstract

The growing burden of cancer urgently requires sustainable solutions to ensure continued access to effective and safe treatments for all patients within Europe. The aim of this article, the third in a series of perspectives, is to discuss potential approaches to sustain cancer care and increase patient access to treatments. Much work remains to ensure the sustainability ceiling (where costs of care exceed the benefits) is not reached. Immediate steps must be taken to avoid this, including patient education to encourage earlier diagnosis, use of treatment-response biomarkers, improving efficiency of healthcare systems, use of managed-entry agreements, introduction of value-based medicines with measurable outcomes and use of less expensive medicines. Here we discuss these potential solutions with a focus on reducing the cost of cancer drugs, using biosimilar medicines as an example. Biosimilar and generic medicines offer a cost-effective treatment option that may help combat the substantially increasing costs of cancer drugs. Competition from biosimilar medicines is expected to drive a decrease in the cost of medicines, resulting in increased affordability and access to therapy, and therefore a greater number of patients could be treated. However, various barriers must be overcome to increase the uptake of biosimilar medicines and education is needed to allay misperceptions and encourage greater use.