Do cancer treatments have option value? Real-world evidence from metastatic melanoma.

A new interesting article has been published in Health Econ. 2019 Jul;28(7):855-867. doi: 10.1002/hec.3899. and titled:

Do cancer treatments have option value? Real-world evidence from metastatic melanoma.

Authors of this article are:

Li M, Basu A, Bennette CS, Veenstra DL, Garrison LP.

A summary of the article is shown below:

A change in the expectations about future treatments may change the option value of a current treatment, thereby affecting its utilization. We conducted an interrupted time series analysis using a large administrative claims database to test whether the utilization of existing cancer treatments changed after the disclosures of the then-investigational drug ipilimumab’s Phase II and Phase III results among metastatic melanoma patients from 2008 to 2011. We used a multinomial logistic regression to analyze the temporal probability of receiving antineoplastic systemic therapy, surgical resection of metastasis, or both, relative to no treatment, in the first 3 months following the first metastasis diagnosis. One thousand eight hundred forty-six metastatic melanoma patients were included. After adjusting for clinical and sociodemographic variables and the underlying time trend, the disclosure of ipilimumab’s Phase II result was associated with a nearly twofold immediate increase in the probability of receiving surgical resection of metastasis relative to no treatment, which was significant at 5% level. No significant effect was observed for the time trend. No significant effects were found for the announcement of the Phase III result. Our findings in metastatic melanoma provide the first empirical evidence of the impact of option value in cancer treatment decision making.© 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Check out the article’s website on Pubmed for more information:



This article is a good source of information and a good way to become familiar with topics such as: metastatic melanoma;option value;real-world evidence;treatment decision making.

New Chemicals from MOLECULAR DEPOT


New Proteins from MOLECULAR DEPOT


New Antibodies from MOLECULAR DEPOT


New Research Kits from MOLECULAR DEPOT

Molecular Depot

Your specialty peptide, proteins, antibodies and chemical compounds store.