There were a record number of new oncology treatments that launched in the US last year and spending on cancer drugs soared, according to a new report from the IQVIA Institute for Human Data Science.
Here are the top 6 cancer drug trends revealed in the report, “Global Oncology Trends 2019: Therapeutics, Clinical Development and Health System Implications:”
- A record 15 new active substance (NAS) oncology treatments with 17 indications launched in the US in 2018. As a result, there are 57 new oncology therapeutics launched covering 89 approved indications for 23 different tumor types.
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- Spending on all oncology medicines globally reached nearly $150 billion in 2018, up 12.9% from 2017. This was the fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth, entirely driven by therapeutic drugs, which increased 15.9%, according to IQVIA. Spending on cancer drugs in the US has doubled since 2013 and exceeded $56 billion in 2018, with more than $9 billion in growth coming from the use of new PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors.
- The average annual cost of new cancer treatments has been trending up for the past two decades, but the median cost dropped $13,000 in 2018 to $149,000, and ranged between $90,000 and more than $300,000, IQIVA said.
- Through 2023, compound annual growth in oncology therapeutics spending is expected to be 11% to 14%, bringing total estimated spending to between $200 and $230 billion worldwide.
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- Thirty-one percent of the approved indications during the last five years have been for hematologic cancers—leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma—while lung cancer leads the solid tumors with 12 indications among the 89, followed by breast cancer (7 approved indications) and melanoma (6), IQVIA found.
- *More than 700 companies across the globe have oncology drugs in late-stage development, including 626 emerging biopharma companies and 28 out of the 33 largest pharma companies. Within the R&D oncologic pipeline, the most intense activity is for immunotherapies, with almost 450 in clinical development.
There are also more than 100 next-generation biotherapeutics—defined as cell, gene, and nucleotide therapies—in clinical trials, focusing on 18 different MOAs. A total of 1,170 oncology clinical trials were initiated in 2018, an increase of 27% from 2017 and 68% from 2013.
Read more: Top 6 Drug Research Trends
