Eight Top Oncology Drug Approvals

Cost: $475,000 per treatment of advanced pediatric B-cell precursor ALL (money-back guarantee to hospitals if it does not work by the end of the first month of therapy); $373,000 per treatment of adults with relapsed large B-cell lymphoma
Impact: “This first-ever approved CAR T-cell product is a highly effective therapy for patient who are completely refractory to chemotherapy or who experience a second relapse.”
-Gerry Messerschmidt, MD, FACP, chief medical officer at Precision for Medicine Oncology and Rare Disease, and Suzana Corritori, MD, PhD, senior vice president, Strategic Drug Development Solutions at Precision for Medicine Oncology and Rare Disease

Cost: Rx price for 5 mL of 20 mg/5 mL in major pharmacies is $3,700 to $4,200
Impact: “Mycosis fungoides and Sézary syndrome are rare, hard-to-treat types of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and the approval of Poteligeo fills an unmet medical need for these patients.”
-Messerschmidt and Corritori

Cost: $26,115 for 30-day supply
Impact: “This is a significant step forward in the treatment of AML and it is anticipated that combinations in earlier subjects will be of tremendous interest, a shift in the current treatment paradigm for patients with the specific IDH-1 mutation.”
-Messerschmidt and Corritori

Cost: $47,500 per dose, with usual treatment period including four doses for a total of $190,000
Impact: “This is a major advance for patients with neuroendocrine tumors and provides a new treatment alternative for a good number of patients who do not respond to other treatments.”
-Messerschmidt and Corritori

Cost: 373,000 per treatment, on an outpatient basis.
Impact: “Use of this agent has the potential to prolong survival in heavily pre-treated patients and/or those with highly aggressive disease trials are planned or ongoing for other CAR T products in other hematological malignancies and solid tumors.”
-Jonathan R. Ptachcinski, PharmD, BCPS, BCOP, clinical pharmacist practitioner, University of North Carolina Medical Center

Cost: About $11,000 per month of therapy, duration of therapy is until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity
Impact: “This therapy has the potential to prolong metastasis-free survival in men who are at high risk of developing metastases.”
-Ptachcinski

Cost: Combination therapy with Yervoy plus Opdivo is approximately $228,000
Impact: “While conventional chemotherapy has been the foundation of first-line treatment of various cancers historically, there are various researchers trying to bypass this potentially toxic and modestly effective approach. Chemotherapy involved drugs that are cytotoxic-while they destroy rapidly dividing cancer cells, they are non-specific and do not target any particular cancer biomarker. In comparison, immunotherapies employ antibodies targeting certain biomarkers in cancer cells and boost the patient’s immune response.”
- Rajiv Kalia, associate vice president of Healthcare Research, MarketsandMarkets

Cost: Wholesale acquisition cost per manufacturer of $4,175 per syringe (compared to $6,231 for Neulasta)
Impact: “Neulasta has been one of the top oncology drug spends for its use in preventing chemotherapy-induced neutropenia; the emergence of biosimilars and competition within this space will benefit patients and help reduce the overall cost of care in oncology.”
-Jeremy Whalen, PharmD, BCOP, specialty clinical program director, oncology, Prime Therapeutics