Promising first-line immuno-combination therapies for unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma: A cost-effectiveness analysis.

Abstract

469 Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer related death all over the world, bringing a heavy social economic burden especially in China. Several immuno-combination therapies have shown promising efficacy in the first-line treatment of unresectable HCC and are widely used in clinical practice. However, which combination is the most affordable is unknown. The current study assessed the cost-effectiveness of the immuno-combinations as first-line treatment for patients with unresectable HCC from the Chinese payers' perspective. Methods: A Markov model was built based on five global, multicenter, open-label, phase III randomized trials (Himalaya, IMbrave150, ORIENT-32, CARES-310, LEAP-002) to investigate the cost-effectiveness of tremelimumab plus durvalumab (STRIDE), atezolizumab plus bevacizumab (A+B), sintilimab plus bevacizumab biosimilar (IBI305) (S+B), camrelizumab plus rivoceranib (C+R) and pembrolizumab plus lenvatinib (P+L). Three disease states were included: progression free survival (PFS), progressive disease (PD), and death. Medical costs were searched from the Red Book, published literatures, and West China Hospital. Cost-effectiveness ratios (CERs) and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) were evaluated to compare costs among different combinations. Sensitivity analyses were performed to assess the robust of the model. Results: The total cost and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) of C+R, S+B, P+L, A+B and STRIDE were $12,109.27 and 0.91, $26,961.60 and 1.12, $55,382.53 and 0.83, $70,985.06 and 0.90, $84,589.01 and 0.73 respectively, resulting in the most cost-effective strategy of C+R with CER of $13,306.89 per QALY followed by S+B with CER of $24,072.86 per QALY. The S+B strategy would become the most cost-effective when the willing-to-pay threshold exceeded $73,500/QALY. In the subgroup analysis, with the application of Asia results in Leap-002 trial, the model results were the same as global data. In the sensitivity analysis, with the variation of parameters, the results were robust. Conclusions: As one of the promising immuno-combination therapies in the first-line systemic treatment for unresectable HCC, camrelizumab plus rivoceranib demonstrated the potential to be the most cost-effective strategy, which warranted further studies to best inform the real-world clinical practices.