Budget impact model of nadofaragene firadenovec for the treatment of high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer that is unresponsive to Bacillus Calmette-Guérin immunotherapy
Journal of Medical Economics, 2026
Aims
To estimate the budget impact of adopting nadofaragene firadenovec for the treatment of adults with high-risk, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG)-unresponsive non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) with carcinoma in situ with or without papillary tumors (CIS ± Ta/T1) from a US third-party payer's perspective.
Methods
A budget impact model was developed to compare total healthcare costs under two scenarios: (1) with nadofaragene firadenovec included in the treatment mix, and (2) without it. The model simulated a hypothetical US health plan covering one million members over a 3-year time horizon. Costs assessed included drug acquisition and administration, surveillance and disease management, cystectomy, and treatment-related adverse events (AEs). Base-case inputs were informed by trial data, published literature, and real-world evidence. Scenario analyses explored alternative population definitions, epidemiology and clinical inputs; one-way sensitivity analyses tested parameter uncertainty.
Results
In the base-case, the estimated per-member-per-month (PMPM) budget impact of adopting nadofaragene firadenovec ranged from $0.0010 in Year 1 to $0.0084 in Year 3. Increased drug and administration costs were partially offset by cost savings from reduced disease progression, fewer cystectomies, and lower AE rates. Scenario analyses demonstrated that even examining a broader population including papillary disease-only patients, the budget impact remained modest ($0.0064-$0.0548 PMPM from Years 1-3). Sensitivity analyses confirmed that results were most influenced by uptake rate, drug cost, and target population size.
Limitations
Key limitations include reliance on projected market shares for nadofaragene firadenovec, omission of recently approved treatments (nogapendekin alfa inbakicept-pmln and TAR-200) due to the lack of publicly available market share data, and assumptions to derive clinical outcomes for certain treatments due to lack of reported data.
Conclusions
Despite its higher acquisition cost, the inclusion of nadofaragene firadenovec resulted in a minimal budget impact as bladder-sparing option for patients with BCG-unresponsive NMIBC with CIS ± Ta/T1.