Adjuvant immune checkpoint blockade revisited

An analysis of the costs of 11 US Food and Drug Administration-approved adjuvant therapies shows that these treatments can place a substantial financial burden on society in the USA. 1 Mousavi I Olivier T Prasad V Cost per event averted in cancer trials in the adjuvant setting from 2018 to 2022. JAMA Netw Open. 2022; 5e2216058 Crossref Scopus (2) Google Scholar In Europe in 2022, five adjuvant immune-checkpoint inhibitor treatments were approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and several more indications are expected to follow. Immune-checkpoint inhibitors are relatively new drugs and have different mechanisms of action to hormonal and chemotherapeutic adjuvant therapies. As a result, the correlation between improved disease-free or event-free survival and overall survival for immune-checkpoint inhibitors needs to be established. Meanwhile, we anticipate that the high patient volume in the adjuvant setting will put pressure on health-care systems.