Potential Cost Implications of New Oncology Approvals

JAMA published an interesting article about the increased cost with new oncology drugs and the impact based on their use.

The article notes that “The growth of cancer drug spending in the US has outpaced spending in nearly all other sectors, and an increasing proportion of the drug development pipeline is devoted to oncology. This 2018 study notes that in order to maintain the 2018 level of drug spending less than 20% of eligible patients could be treated.
Oncology new drug candidates comprise 17.5% of our current knowledgebase of late stage investigational drugs (160/913). Prescribe Right’s list of recent FDA oncology drug approvals, begins with avapritinib (January 9, 2020) and ends with tepotinib (February 23, 2021) totaling twenty-two out of a total of fifty-one recent approvals. All of the new approvals during 2020 were available within thirty days of approval. 

We wonder how many have made it into formularies. Recent surveys indicate that P&T Committees sometimes wait for up to six months of post-launch data to study prior to making a formulary decision. 

Click here to review our complete our list of recent approvals. Pricing is included for all 2020 approvals.