Clinical And Treatment Characteristics Of Patients Treated With The First Therapeutic Oncology Biosimilars Bevacizumab-Awwb And Trastuzumab-Anns In The Us

Background: In July 2019, bevacizumab-awwb and trastuzumab-anns were marketed in the USA as the first therapeutic oncology biosimilars. We aimed to investigate the initial real-world use of bevacizumab-awwb and trastuzumab-anns for cancer management in US oncology practices.Methods: A retrospective, observational analysis of data from US cancer patients (18years of age) was carried out to describe the use of bevacizumab-awwb and trastuzumab-anns during the first 12months following their market entry, using structured data from the Flatiron Health electronic health record-derived database.Results: A total of 2952 and 2997 patients with recorded use of bevacizumab-awwb and trastuzumab-anns, respectively, were included in the analysis. The first use of bevacizumab-awwb and trastuzumab-anns was in a patient with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) within 10days of market availability and in a patient with early stage breast cancer (eBC) within 4days, respectively. The use of these biosimilars was observed across all approved cancer indications; 68% of bevacizumab-awwb users were those diagnosed with mCRC and 72% of trastuzumab-anns users were those diagnosed with eBC. Approximately half the patients were previously exposed to reference product (RP) prior to initiation of bevacizumab-awwb or trastuzumab-anns. Among pre-exposed patients, the majority received the biosimilars [bevacizumab-awwb (63-85%) or trastuzumab-anns (75-81%)] within 28days of the last infusion of the RP. For both biosimilars, no major differences were observed in patient characteristics between RP-naive and pre-exposed patients.Conclusion: Initial evidence from the first 12months following market entry suggests rapid clinical adoption of bevacizumab-awwb and trastuzumab-anns across all approved tumor types. Usage of these two biosimilars was observed in both RP-naive patients and patients who were previously treated with RP, with no distinctive differences in patient characteristics between the two groups. A video abstract is available for this article as part of the Kanjintionline supplemental material.