Frontiers in Pharmacology (Nov 2023)

Integrating treatment cost reduction strategies and biomarker research to reduce costs and personalize expensive treatments: an example of a self-funding trial in non-small cell lung cancer

  • Alessandra I. G. Buma,
  • Berber Piet,
  • Rob ter Heine,
  • Michel M. van den Heuvel,
  • Paul Brinkman,
  • Daan van den Broek,
  • Sjaak Burgers,
  • Francesco Ciompi,
  • Simona M. Cristescu,
  • Bram van Ginneken,
  • Katrien Grünberg,
  • Lizza Hendriks,
  • Jeroen Hiltermann,
  • Firdaus Mohamed Housein,
  • Alwin Huitema,
  • Jakko van Inge,
  • Colin Jacobs,
  • Hans Koenen,
  • Marjolijn Ligtenberg,
  • Anke H. Maitland-van der Zee,
  • Vincent van der Noort,
  • Mathias Prokop,
  • Valesca Rètel,
  • Heinrich Roder,
  • Huub van Rossum,
  • Ruben Smeets,
  • Thomas Würdinger

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2023.1274532
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14

Abstract

Read online

Personalization of treatment offers the opportunity to treat patients more effectively based on their dominant disease-specific features. The increasing number and types of treatment, and the high costs associated with these treatments, however, demand new approaches that improve patient selection while reducing treatment-associated costs to ensure sustainable healthcare. The DEDICATION-1 trial has been designed to investigate the non-inferiority of lower dosing regimens when compared to standard of care dosing regimens as a potential effective treatment cost reduction strategy to reduce costs of treatment with expensive immune checkpoint inhibitors in non-small cell lung cancer. If non-inferiority is confirmed, lower dosing regimens could be implemented for all therapeutic indications of pembrolizumab. The cost savings obtained within the trial are partly reinvested in biomarker research to improve the personalization of pembrolizumab treatment. The implementation of these biomarkers will potentially lead to additional cost savings by preventing ineffective pembrolizumab exposure, thereby further reducing the financial pressure on healthcare systems. The concepts discussed within this perspective can be applied both to other anticancer agents, as well as to treatments prescribed outside the oncology field.

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