Herceptin cancer drug wins final British go-ahead
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s cost-effectiveness watchdog
issued final guidance on Wednesday recommending that Herceptin
should be used in early breast cancer and be paid for by the
state health service.
The move by the National Institute of Health and Clinical
Excellence (NICE) clears the way for the drug to be prescribed
on the National Health Service for women with aggressive HER2
breast cancer following surgery.
NICE had given a preliminary green light to the Roche
medicine in June but that decision was challenged by Newbury
and Community Primary Care Trust, delaying final approval. In
the event, the trust’s appeal was not upheld.
British authorities have been under intense pressure to
back wider use of Herceptin after women with early-stage
disease went to court to force local health authorities to pay
for it.
Until now, Herceptin has been recommended for treating only
metastatic cancer, a late-stage condition in which tumors have
spread around the body. The new approval extends its use to a
much large number of mainly younger patients.
NICE deliberations are watched closely by other
governments, who increasingly have to weigh the benefits of
modern medicines against their price. Herceptin costs around
20,000 pounds ($38,000) per patient a year.
Herceptin is not a wonder drug. It only works in just over
one in five breast cancer cases, and it can cause
cardiotoxicity, which means it is not suitable for patients
with heart problems.
But the injectable drug has been shown to prolong survival
chances for those women whose tumors contain a large amount of
the HER2 protein and NICE Chief Executive Andrew Dillion said
it was clearly “clinically and cost effective.”
The medicine, which was originally discovered by Roche’s
U.S. biotech partner Genentech, is the Swiss group’s
third-biggest product, with sales last year of 2.15 billion
Swiss francs ($1.75 billion).
It was first approved in Europe in 2000 and in the United
States in 1998 for advanced breast cancer.