Episode 28: Near Equivalence and Designing Cost-Effective Cancer Therapies

Chadi hosts three medical oncologists to break down “near equivalence” for alternative standard-of-care cancer therapies – a new paradigm published in detail in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. Ian Tannock, MD, PhD, Princess Margaret Cancer Center (Canada); Mark Ratain, MD, University of Chicago; and Daniel Goldstein, MD, Rabin Medical Center (Israel), describe what is meant by “near equivalence” and the practice of generating evidence to support global alternative cost-effective treatments. How do you design and implement studies that show lower drug doses are as effective as the labeled doses and treatment schedules? Does listing drugs at a lower price than comparable drugs impede innovation in a capitalistic society? How do poor control arms make it through regulatory and IRB approvals? How can the oncology world come to terms with “imperfect data” for supporting alternative standard-of-care treatments? These questions and more are answered in this meeting of the minds.View the publication in the Journal of Clinical Oncology https://ascopubs.org/doi/full/10.1200/JCO.20.02768