Dr Neal Dave: Are Physicians Excited for More Biosimilars to Enter the Oncology Space?

Neal Dave, PharmD, the executive director of pharmacy at Texas Oncology, talks about the anticipation for more biosimilars to enter the oncology market and the current level of interest in the pipeline.

Transcript:

What’s the level of interest currently in using biosimilars in oncology treatment and how big is the anticipation for biosimilars in the pipeline?

Our experience has been that physicians are generally okay with it. We haven't had an increase in side effects or different side effects that you would not expect from the branded [reference] product to the biosimilar product. And so, originally, when we were talking about biosimilars before they were coming out, we discussed this a lot, if physicians are going to be resistant, if they're going to not want their patient to get a biosimilar. If patients are going to have a lot of questions about “Why is this a biosimilar? Why isn't the same thing?” Just the wording on how to communicate what these drugs actually are to patients. But, honestly, we haven't had any hesitation from our physician group on any of the biosimilars, even when we've even switched patients because the cost had dropped significantly enough where we thought we had to start taking advantage of that lower cost, and we wanted to lower the cost of overall health care. And so, we switched patients that were on a [reference] product to a biosimilar and didn't experience any increase in side effects, or any trends, anyways, in increasing side effects.