Biosimilars in oncology: Effects on economy and therapeutic innovations

The introduction of new and innovative treatment options for cancer patients is accompanied by a tremendous increase in healthcare costs. Consequently, new financing approaches are strongly needed to reduce the burden on the healthcare system. The introduction of biosimilars - biological drugs containing the active substance of an already approved reference biological drug - can potentially relieve the burden on healthcare systems. Calculating the costs for three frequently used biosimilars, we simulated the health-economic impact of biosimilars in the real world for the German healthcare system.

Based on available health-economic analyses, the actual prescription and cost containment potential of biosimilars compared to the originator were calculated exemplarily for the cost-intensive therapies trastuzumab in breast cancer, rituximab in follicular lymphoma and G-CSF in supportive care. Incidence calculations were based e.g. on data from the Robert-Koch-Institution, Munich Cancer Registry, and quality indicators of certified centres. Cost calculation was based on Lauer-Taxe® (official reference for pharmaceutical price information).

The application of biosimilars would generate potential annual savings for the chosen examples of up to 4.9 Mio EUR for rituximab in follicular lymphoma, 40.5 Mio EUR for filgrastim, 56.4 Mio EUR for pegfilgrastim, and between 95.9 and 120.5 Mio EUR for trastuzumab.

The consequent use of biosimilars allows a considerable reduction of overall treatment costs, especially for cost-intensive long-term maintenance treatments and therapies with high incidences. If the option of biosimilar usage is fully exploited, enormous resources could be released within the healthcare system in order to offset financing new innovative therapies.