Targeted Therapy and Its Availability in Serbia

Targeted therapy has made a significant breakthrough for the treatment of different kind of severe diseases, mostly oncological and autoimmune ones. Biological or biotech products, as well as small synthetic molecules, like family of tyrosine kinase inhibitors, have already expressed their efficacy in several important indications. Their availability on the market and reimbursement possibility is of great importance, especially for the patients needed to be on lifelong therapies. Targeted therapy enhanced progression free and overall survival in many conditions, but also a number of these therapies produced important and severe side effects. Considering the fact that targeted therapy is on the global market relatively shortly, there is necessity for prolonged therapy monitoring: for further effectiveness assessment, for safety profile and long term health consequences establishment. Reimbursed targeted therapy proved its benefits that overweight risks, but still remains extremely high costs problem for its application. For an upper middle income country like Serbia, with significantly lower health care expenditures per capita than in other well developed countries, the availability of this expensive therapy is not yet gratifying.