The high price of anticancer drugs: origins, implications, barriers, solutions

Globally, annual spending on anticancer drugs is around US$100 billion, and is predicted to rise to $150 billion by 2020. In the USA, a novel anticancer drug routinely costs more than $100,000 per year of treatment. When adjusted for per capita spending power, however, drugs are most unaffordable in economically developing nations, such as India and China. Not only are launch prices high and rising, but individual drug prices are often escalated during exclusivity periods. High drug prices harm patients - often directly through increased out-of-pocket expenses, which reduce levels of patient compliance and lead to unfavourable outcomes - and harms society - by imposing cumulative price burdens that are unsustainable. Moreover, high drug prices are not readily explained by rational factors, including the extent of benefit patients are likely to derive, the novelty of the agents, or spending on research and development. Herein, we summarize the available empirical evidence on the costs of anticancer drugs, probe the origins and implications of these high costs, and discuss proposed solutions.

Indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 28290490 (DOI 10.1038/nrclinonc.2017.31). Matched by DOI alone: one bottleneck page and 21 idea pages cite this DOI among their external links (the pages are listed under Related), and this page was written so that the citation resolves inside OnCo. No figure has been checked by an editor.