Cost-effectiveness of adding atezolizumab to first-line chemotherapy in patients with advanced triple-negative breast cancer

Background: The effectiveness of atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel for advanced triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has been demonstrated. We aimed to evaluate its cost-effectiveness on advanced TNBC from the US payer perspective.

Methods: A Markov model was adopted to project the disease course of newly diagnosed advanced TNBC. The clinical data were gathered from the IMpassion130 trial. Cost and health preference data were derived from the literature. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was measured, and one-way sensitivity analysis and probabilistic sensitivity analysis were performed for exploring the model uncertainties.

Results: Our results demonstrated that atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel augmented versus nab-paclitaxel therapy cost $104,278 and $149,465 and yielded an additional 0.371 and 0.762 of quality-adjusted life year (QALY) in in all patients with unknown PD-L1 status and subpopulation with PD-L1-positive, respectively, which led to an ICER of $281,448 and $196,073 per QALY gained. In all patients with unknown PD-L1 status, atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel treatment guiding by PD-L1 expression testing resulted in an ICER of $183,508 per QALY gained. Atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel could maintain a trend of positive incremental net health benefits and >50% probabilities of cost-effectiveness at the threshold of $200,000/QALY in more than half of subgroups with PD-L1-positive. One-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses revealed the results were most sensitive to the hazard ratios (HRs) of overall survival (OS) of atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel versus nab-paclitaxel treatment.

Conclusion: The atezolizumab plus nab-paclitaxel treatment is likely to be a cost-effective option compared with chemotherapy based on nab-paclitaxel for the patients with PD-L1-positive advanced TNBC.