ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1591517
Toripalimab Plus Chemotherapy Versus Chemotherapy as First-Line Therapy for Extensive-Stage Small Cell Lung Cancer:A Cost-effectiveness Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Thoracic Oncology Surgery, School of Oncology Clinical Medicine, Fujian Medical University, Fujian Provincial Cancer Hospital, Fuzhou, Fujian Province, China
- 2Cancer Hospital of Shantou University Medical College, Shantou, Guangdong Province, China
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Objective:The aim of this study was to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of toripalimab plus chemotherapy compared to chemotherapy alone as first-line therapy for extensive-stage small cell lung cancer(ES-SCLC) from the Chinese medical perspective.Methods:Our study utilized a partitioned survival model to estimate the costs and clinical outcomes for patients with ES-SCLC. The model incorporated direct healthcare costs and clinical outcomes .The primary outcome measures used in our analysis were quality adjusted life year (QALY) and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER). These measures were employed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness advantage of the treatment strategy by comparing it to the willingness-to-pay (WTP) thresholds.To account for uncertainties in the model results,One-way and probabilistic sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess the uncertainty of the model results.Results:The base-case analysis showed that the total cost for toripalimab plus chemotherapy was $50,918.81, while the cost for chemotherapy was $20,280.31.The combination toripalimab therapy led to a higher QALY value of 1.59 compared to 0.55 for chemotherapy. This translated into an ICER of $29,460.09 per QALY gained, which was below the WTP threshold of $40,343.68 per QALY.The results of the sensitivity analyses demonstrated that the findings were not significantly affected by changes in any of the input parameters.Conclusion: Our analysis suggests that toripalimab plus chemotherapy is likely to be a cost-effective first-line therapy for ES-SCLC compared to chemotherapy alone, based on the WTP threshold of $40343.68 per QALY.
Keywords: cost-effectiveness analysis, Toripalimab, Extensive-stage small cell lung cancer, partitioned survival model, Incremental cost-effectiveness ratios, 1．Introduction
Received: 17 Mar 2025; Accepted: 17 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhang, Chen, Zhu and Zheng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhiwei Zheng, Cancer Hospital of Shantou University Medical College, Shantou, Guangdong Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.