Breast Cancer: Targets and Therapy (Feb 2023)
Cost-Effectiveness of Abemaciclib in Early Breast Cancer Patients: One Size Fits All or Tailoring to Patients’ Needs?
Abstract
Elisabeth M Jongbloed,1 Hedwig M Blommestein,2 Hannah M van Schoubroeck,2 John WM Martens,1 Saskia M Wilting,1 Carin A Uyl-de Groot,2 Agnes Jager1 1Department of Medical Oncology; Erasmus MC Cancer Institute, Rotterdam, the Netherlands; 2Erasmus School of Health Policy and Management, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, the NetherlandsCorrespondence: Elisabeth M Jongbloed, Department of Medical Oncology; Erasmus MC Cancer Institute, Dr. Molenwaterplein 40, Rotterdam, 3014 GD, the Netherlands, Tel +31 107044375, Email [email protected]: The addition of two years of abemaciclib treatment to standard adjuvant endocrine therapy in all patients with high risk ER+, HER2- early breast cancer (EBC) has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Pre-selection of patients with an immediate risk of recurrence within the group of clinically high risk patients using detection of minimal residual disease (MRD) using patient-informed circulating tumor DNA assays during follow-up could enhance efficacy. Here, we investigate the cost-effectiveness of the addition of two years abemaciclib in all high risk HR+, HER2- patients and in MRD-guided high risk patients only.Methods: Two semi-Markov models were developed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of adding two years of abemaciclib compared to “standard treatment”: 1) “abemaciclib all” and 2) “MRD-guided abemaciclib” using MRD-guidance. Data of the MonarchE trial were used to model the invasive disease-free survival (iDFS). Since iDFS and overall survival (OS) data of abemaciclib were currently limited, abemaciclib effects were extrapolated using a favorable, intermediate and unfavorable effect scenario.Results: The addition of abemaciclib in all high-risk EBC patients prolonged iDFS slightly (0.04 additional quality adjusted life years (QALYs)) and led to higher costs compared to standard ET, leading to a high incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER) of € 1,551,876/QALY. Neither the favorable effect scenario (additional 1.09 QALYs) was cost-effective (ICER € 62,935/QALY), using a willingness-to-pay threshold of € 50,000/QALY. The “MRD-guided abemaciclib” strategy resulted in lower costs and an increase in QALYs (1.27) compared to “standard treatment” in the unfavorable effect scenario.Conclusion: The addition of abemaciclib to adjuvant endocrine therapy in all high-risk ER+, HER2- EBC patients is not cost-effective. However, using MRD detection to justify the addition of abemaciclib treatment dominates standard treatment in this cost-effectiveness analysis. Further evaluation of MRD detection in EBC by means of prospective clinical trials assessing clinical utility is recommended and promising in terms of cost-effectiveness.Keywords: breast cancer, minimal residual disease, circulating tumor DNA, cost-effectiveness, abemaciclib
