Kate O’Regan, Head of Communications and Stakeholder Relations at Medicines for Europe shared a post on LinkedIn:

“I was thrilled to moderate a session dedicated to future-proofing access to cancer medicines at this year’s BIOS24. Here is just some of what we discussed:

Cancer patients have better outcomes than ever but with a huge budget impact. Cancer medicines are the largest chunk of pharma budget spending (+20%). There is a ‘biosimilar void’ coming, meaning future patient access is seriously at risk. Thanks for bringing us the data Aurelio Arias from IQVIA.

Cancer care is not just about medicines – there is a full array of support needed to bring a person from screening to diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care. Health staff constraints and shortages also make this very challenging looking to the future. Thanks to Rosa Giuliani for sharing the oncologist’s perspective.

The speed at which the cancer treatment landscape changes is an additional challenge. This affects the future viability of biosimilar development. Without competition from biosimilar medicines, the future access forecast is bleak. Thanks to Chiara Brouns for sharing the health insurers’ view.

Medicines are produced to reach patients, they do not work when left on the shelf. Patients with cancer need very timely access to medicines to manage the disease. Thanks to Zorana Maravic for being the voice of the digestive cancer patient community.

The future is not given, we need political and policy action today to create better cancer treatment prospects for the future. Biosimilars are an important piece of the puzzle and need to be supported! Time to continue the hard work at Medicines for Europe.”

Source: Kate O’Regan/LinkedIn