In the fight against cancer, clinical trials from public funds have saved 3.34 million years of life in the American population.
$125. This is the investment needed for a year of life gained for cancer patients. Joseph Unger, an American biostatistician, analyzed the impact publicly funded clinical trials from SWOG, an organization under the American Cancer Institute (NCI).
“NCI’s investments in SWOG have resulted in significant benefits for Americans,” he explains. Many people with cancer have seen their lives extended thanks to the therapies tested in our public clinical trials. In addition, the cost of these searches is relatively low. Strong impact and low cost: the profitability for taxpayers is very good. »
23 conclusive clinical trials
In all, these investments in the 193 type III clinical trials – the most expensive – mobilized 200,000 patients between 1956 and 2016. Among them, 23 concluded with an improvement in the survival of patients with cancers of the skin, lung, breast, prostate or blood (leukaemia, lymphoma, myeloma), leading to the development of 14 drugs and a hundred treatment procedures.
Using epidemiological data on these cancers, Dr. Unger estimated the number of people who could have benefited from these advances, and the expected gain in life thanks to the new therapies. By these estimates, it comes to 3.34 million years of life gained.
Still profitable at $1,250 per year
And it is by dividing the cost to the taxpayer of these trials – ie 418 million dollars – by the number of years of life gained that he obtains this cost price of 125 dollars per year. A surprisingly low cost, for the researcher. Yet he took the upper limit of the range.
Even by excluding potential candidates for treatments who would not have had access to them in the end, the number of years of life gained remains above 2 million. That is a cost price of just over $200. “Even if my estimate were ten times higher, and the investment reached $1,250 per year earned, it would still be very low. »
“Time is the most precious gift we have,” said SWOG Chairman Dr. Charles Blanke. Giving patients and their families more time is a major achievement. This is an exceptional benefit to attribute to the federal funds allocated to cancer research. »
In the United States, cancers are the main cause of years of life lost (9.2 million in 2013), ahead of cardiovascular diseases (7.3 million), according to a study by the NCI.
The results of the study, presented on June 5 at the congress of the American Association of Clinical Oncology (ASCO 2017), are published in the journal JAMA Oncology.
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