These days, prices of drugs are increasingly scrutinized and cost of cancer medicines already reached $100 billion in 2014. According to a report published on Tuesday from the IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics, it increased over 10% from 2013, and increased from $75 billion five years earlier. According to IMS, targeted therapies, which point toward specific drivers of cancer, now account for approximately half of total spending.

Now more cancer drugs are being approved, leading to increased spending on them. According to IMS, in the last five years, the compound average growth rate on cancer medicines has been 6.5% worldwide. It added that rate would be 6 to 8% through 2018.

IMS researchers, led by executive director Murray Aitken, wrote in the report's executive summary that earlier diagnosis, longer treatment duration and increased effectiveness of drug therapies are playing a major role in increasing levels of spending on medicines for cancer care.

They wrote, “Measures of value continue to be tested by payers and providers who, in some health systems, most notably the US, have growing concerns about the financial burden faced by cancer patients".

As per IMS, between 2010 and 2014, 45 new drugs for cancer were launched in the market, together with 10 last year alone, in which two drugs are so-called immunotherapies, a new class that links the immune system to fight cancer. These drugs are Keytruda, from Merck and Opdivo, from Bristol-Myers Squibb and both are priced at $12,500 a month.

Pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts said that cancer medicines will be among one of its goals in future. According to IMS, two thirds of Americans diagnosed with cancer now live at least five years, compared to just over half in 1990.