ESMO 2018 | Education is key to improve confidence in biosimilars

Justin Stebbing, MD, of Imperial College London, London, UK, shares his opinions on the use of biosimilars in oncology at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2018 Congress, in Munich, Germany. Prof. Stebbing believes that it is possible to extrapolate from clinical data from the curable adjuvant or neo-adjuvant setting to the metastatic setting in breast cancer; however, it is not possible to do the reverse. He highlights that there is still a need for education on biosimilars for both HCPs and patients, as the subject involves many new concepts such as similarity, equivalence and non-inferiority which are important to comprehend. Through education, confidence in the use of biosimilars should continue to increase and in the long run this would have a positive impact on treatment costs.