by Catherine Featherston
BERLIN, Jun 26 (APM) - Germany's pharmaceuticals industry needs new pricing models to tackle the rising costs of new cancer medicines, said an expert from the Boston Consulting Group at a press conference in Berlin on Monday.
The "core concern" is for immuno-oncology combination therapies, said Judith Wallenstein, senior partner and managing director of the Boston Consulting Group Henderson Institute in Europe, speaking at the presentation of a new biotech report for German pharma lobby vfa.
"Combinations of novel therapies in oncology are the prime example of what is being discussed when people cite costs going up to the 300,000 euros per treatment range."
But roughly three-quarters of all combination trials at the moment are with established agents, some of which have already gone off-patent, she said.
"So a lot of the combinations will end up being combinations with substances that are either generics or biosimilars."
In the future, a pricing model based around the idea of "adding to" an individual therapy will be "too simplistic", she said.
Another element of cancer research and development that spurs the need for new pricing models is the advancement in therapies delivered in single or double doses which have long-term effectiveness, Wallenstein said.
These will pose another challenge to pricing but offer a "huge" benefit to both patients and payers, she said.
"Specifically when you think about quality of life and integrating them into the labour market again."
According to the report, sales of biologics increased by 12.4% in Germany to 9.3 billion euros in 2016, bringing their share of the total pharmaceuticals market to 24.8%.
In 2016, 38 new drugs were approved, with a record number - 14 or 37% - being biologics, said Frank Mathias, head of vfa and CEO of Rentschler Technology, at the press conference.
"This underlines the increasing significance of biologics in medical care," he added.
The 2016 figures reflect a steady increase compared to 2015, which saw a 9.7% or 8.2 billion euros sales growth and a 22.9% increase in market share compared to the previous year (APMMA 48532).
The sales volume was calculated using manufacturers' prices for all health insurers (statutory and private), after deduction of general discounts but without knowledge of any further discounts negotiated with insurers individually, Mathias said.
Immuno-onclogy drugs accounted for the biggest share of the 9.3 billion euros in biologics sales, with 2.8 billion euros in sales. Oncology followed with sales of 2.2 billion euros.
The biologics pipeline remains "well filled", with the number of compounds in clinical development rising to 636, compared to 627 in 2015, reflecting a "consistently high level of investment in the pipeline," said Mathias.
R&D remained highly focused on cancer drugs, with 226 molecules. There were 124 immuno-oncology drugs in the pipeline. Biosimilars now account for over 25% of the total biologics Phase III pipeline, he added.
The pipeline growth demonstrates that biologics will remain an important employment driver for Germany. The number of employees in this segment grew by 8.1% in 2016, an increase of 3,300 to more than 44,000, said Mathias.
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