Abstract
Advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) are potential game changers in modern medical care with an anticipated major impact for patients and society. They are a new drug class often referred to as “living drugs,” and are based on complex components such as vectors, cells and even tissues. The production of such ATMPs involves innovative biotechnological methods. In this survey, we have assessed the perception of European citizens regarding ATMPs and health care in Europe, in relation to other important topics, such as safety and security, data protection, climate friendly energy supply, migration, and others. A crucial question was to determine to what extent European citizens wish to support public funding of innovations in healthcare and reimbursement strategies for ATMPs. To answer this, we conducted an online survey in 13 European countries (representative of 85.3% of the entire EU population including the UK in 2020), surveying a total of 7,062 European citizens. The survey was representative with respect to adult age groups and gender in each country. Healthcare had the highest ranking among important societal topics. We found that 83% of the surveyed EU citizens were in support of more public funding of technologies in the field of ATMPs. Interestingly, 74% of respondents are in support of cross-border healthcare for patients with rare diseases to receive ATMP treatments and 61% support the reimbursement of very expensive ATMPs within the European health care system despite the current lack of long-term efficacy data. In conclusion, healthcare is a top ranking issue for European Citizens, who additionally support funding of new technologies to enable the wider application of ATMPs in Europe.
Highlights
Advanced therapies or advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) are innovative medicinal products that include gene therapies, cellular therapies, and tissue engineered products [1]
Several major reviews and surveys considering the development of ATMPs in Regenerative Medicine (RegMed), Tissue Engineering (TE), and Stem Cell (SC) industry have been done in the past, mainly focusing on the dominant United States (US) market [2,3,4]
Considering limitations, one must first of all acknowledge that the people who decided to participate in this survey were most likely generally interested in the survey’s topic and the survey may be biased in the positive direction
Summary
Advanced therapies or advanced therapy medicinal products (ATMPs) are innovative medicinal products that include gene therapies, cellular therapies, and tissue engineered products [1] These new therapeutic approaches aim to repair or replace lost function, thereby generally aiming for long-term effects or even cures instead of symptomatic treatment. A number of practical and administrative hurdles need to be overcome before ATMPs can be integrated into the existing health care ecosystems and be made broadly available to the public. This may entail novel funding concepts and enabling an organized development of manufacturing technologies and production sites, as well as new reimbursement strategies
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