Drug Cost Avoidance Resulting from Participation in Clinical Trials: A 10-Year Retrospective Analysis of Cancer Patients with Solid Tumors

Abstract

The objective of this single-center retrospective study was to describe the clinical characteristics of adult patients with solid tumors enrolled in cancer clinical trials over a 10-year period (2010–2019) and to assess drug cost avoidance (DCA) associated with sponsors’ contributions. The sponsors’ contribution to pharmaceutical expenditure was calculated according to the actual price (for each year) of pharmaceutical specialties that the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital (HUVH) would have had to bear in the absence of sponsorship. A total of 2930 clinical trials were conducted with 10,488 participants. There were 140 trials in 2010 and 459 in 2019 (228% increase). Clinical trials of high complexity phase I and basket trials accounted for 34.3% of all trials. There has been a large variation in the pattern of clinical research over the study period, whereas, in 2010, targeted therapy accounted for 79.4% of expenditure and cytotoxic drugs for 20.6%; in 2019, immunotherapy accounted for 68.4%, targeted therapy for 24.4%, and cytotoxic drugs for only 7.1%. A total of four hundred twenty-one different antineoplastic agents were used, the variability of which increased from forty-seven agents in 2010, with only seven of them accounting for 92.8% of the overall pharmaceutical expenditure) to three hundred seventeen different antineoplastic agents in 2019, with thirty-three of them accounting for 90.6% of the overall expenditure. The overall expenditure on antineoplastic drugs in clinical care patients not included in clinical trials was EUR 120,396,096. The total cost of antineoplastic drugs supplied by sponsors in a clinical trial setting was EUR 107,306,084, with a potential DCA of EUR 92,662,609. Overall, clinical trials provide not only the best context for the progress of clinical research and healthcare but also create opportunities for reducing cancer care costs.