Making personalized cancer therapies more cost effective

As scientists continue making breakthroughs in personalized cancer treatment, delivering those therapies in the most cost effective manner has become increasingly important. Now researchers at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, USA, have identified new ways of doing just that, allowing more patients to benefit from this revolution in cancer care.

In a paper published in the British Journal of Cancer, health economist Adam Atherly, of the Colorado School of Public Health (CSPH) and medical oncologist Ross Camidge, of the University of Colorado Cancer Center, argue the cost of profiling patients' tumors for specific molecular abnormalities must be considered. This kind of molecular profiling is increasingly being used to determine who would benefit most from a variety of cancer drugs. In addition, many new drugs are now being restricted to cancer patients with specific molecular sub-types of the disease. Many of these initial breakthroughs have happened in lung cancer, but dividing one disease into many different sub-diseases at the molecular level is expected to extend across most of cancer medicine in the next few years.

"In recent years, we have championed the practice of performing very sophisticated molecular tests on the tumors of every lung cancer patient we see. We then use this information to direct patients to the most appropriate targeted therapy for their cancer," said Dr Camidge, CU Cancer Center investigator and director of the thoracic oncology clinical program at University of Colorado Hospital (UCH).