Dr Gary Lyman Sees Knowledge of Biosimilars in Cancer Has Improved

Although there is still a need for more education around the use of biosimilars in cancer, it seems oncologists have become more knowledgeable in the past few years, said Gary H. Lyman, MD, MPH, of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance.

Transcript

How comfortable are your peers with using biosimilars to treat patients with cancer? Do you see a need for additional educational activities for prescribers?

There’s absolutely a need for more educational activities and we’re continuing to pursue that both in the medical literature, in reviews, at the major medical meetings, including here at NCCN [National Comprehensive Cancer Network Annual Conference]. It’s imperative.

However, I’ve been doing these education programs probably for the last 3, 3.5 years, and at each one I do see a more educated audience. When I get the questions about the use of biosimilars that are being asked, they’re clearly more familiar with the concepts and they’re asking more subtle and deeper questions. So, I think we are seeing an impact. Again, we’ve gotten NCCN, [the American Society of Clinical Oncology], and the American Society of Hematology all doing large educational programs on these.

And it’s like anything that new: it takes time. And I think over the next 3 to 5 years, I’m anticipating there will be a large-scale impact of biosimilars.