The ESMO Cancer Medicines Committee is committed to improving access to affordable medicines for patients with cancer worldwide and its major achievements are reported below.
Committee Publications
- In 2025, the paper ‘ESMO Global Consortium Study on the availability, out-of-pocket costs, and accessibility of cancer medicines: 2023 update’’ was published in Annals of Oncology.
- In 2023, the ‘ESMO study on the availability and accessibility of biomolecular technologies in oncology in Europe’ was published in Annals of Oncology, and ‘Essential cancer medicines: adding feasibility to the magnitude of clinical benefit value chain’ was published in ESMO Open.
- In 2019, the article ‘Knowledge and use of biosimilars in oncology: a survey by the European Society for Medical Oncology’ was published in ESMO Open.
- In 2017, ‘The ESMO position paper on biosimilars in oncology: enhancing the provision of accurate education and information’ was published in ESMO Open.
- In 2017, the ‘ESMO International Consortium Study on the availability, out-of-pocket costs and accessibility of antineoplastic medicines in countries outside of Europe’ was published in Annals of Oncology.
- In 2016, the paper ‘Biosimilars: a position paper of the European Society for Medical Oncology, with particular reference to oncology prescribers’ was published in ESMO Open, and the ‘ESMO European Consortium Study on the availability, out-of-pocket costs and accessibility of antineoplastic medicines in Europe’ was published in Annals of Oncology.
Milestones
- In 2023, the European Commission has published the first ‘Union list of critical medicines’, together with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the Member States’ Heads of Medicines Agencies (HMA). ESMO has provided feedback to the Union List, reviewing critical medicines on the list and identifying additional active substances that were currently missing from the list. Additionally, ESMO has joined the Critical Medicines Alliance, a consultative mechanism which brings together all relevant stakeholders, to identify priorities for action and propose solutions to strengthen the supply of critical medicines in the EU, to prevent and combat their shortages.
- In 2018, data from the ESMO studies on affordability and accessibility has been deemed valuable to the World Health Organization (WHO), who cited the studies as the most comprehensive assessment on the availability of cancer medicines globally in the WHO Technical Report on the pricing of cancer medicines and its impacts report.
Additional resources
- In 2019, Shortages of Inexpensive Essential Medicines comment was published in the Lancet Oncology. On the ESMO website, the ‘Understanding Biosimilars for cancer patients’ infographic for patients with cancer was released.
- In 2019, a Call to Action requesting the EU to make a political commitment to tackle inexpensive essential medicines shortages was launched and endorsed by several stakeholders, and 5 country reports (Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Germany, Romania) were published, to highlight the frequent lack of medicines in Europe.
- In 2017, ESMO supported The Economist Intelligence Unit in the publication of the report ‘Cancer medicines shortages in Europe Policy recommendations to prevent and manage shortages’.