Are Targeted Agents for Colorectal Cancer Cost Effective?

Survival improvements in colorectal cancer (CRC) have been incremental and progressive over the past 2 decades, thanks to improvements in systemic chemotherapy and the identification of active agents targeting the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) pathways. However, the likely advent of more new agents to treat this disease and the expense to employ them in clinical practice are raising increasing concerns about the cost versus survival benefit of these new therapies.

Investigators now report a cost analysis of the recently approved VEGF-targeted agent regorafenib for patients with chemotherapy-refractory CRC. Data were used from the CORRECT trial, which showed that regorafenib provided a s…