Patients could be denied thousands of life-prolonging drugs under new guidelines that do not always classify terminal cancer as “severe”, pharmaceutical industry bosses have warned.
A recent decision by the watchdog the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) to block the wonder breast cancer drug Enhertu is just the “tip of the iceberg”.
Major pharmaceutical companies say around 2,000 new cancer drugs are in development, but have warned that changes to the way regulators evaluate them mean many will be rejected for use in the NHS.
Haran Maheson, from manufacturer Daiichi Sankyo UK, which developed Enhertu, said: “In many ways, trastuzumab deruxtecan – or Enhertu – is just the tip of the iceberg.
‘This goes far beyond a company’s individual portfolio for a particular product. It is a problem that affects the entire industry.”
Patients could be denied thousands of life-prolonging drugs under new guidelines, drug bosses warned (file image)
Enhertu, the miracle breast cancer drug, is administered as an intravenous (IV) infusion (file image)
Nice introduced new guidelines to determine the cost-effectiveness of medicines for use in the NHS following a review in 2021.
While previous criteria focused on cancer treatment at the end of life, a new measure, known as a severity-modifying score, was introduced to give more equal weighting to all serious illnesses.
This led to Enhertu being rejected on cost grounds earlier this year and effectively meant that metastatic breast cancer, which has spread with a short life expectancy, was downgraded from being a high to medium severity disease.
Trials of the drug had found that it increased cancer control time from seven months to more than two years, results that experts called “mind-blowing.”
The drug is available in Scotland, as well as 13 other European countries, the United States and Canada.
Baroness Delyth Morgan, of Breast Cancer Now, who appealed the decision to block Enhertu, warned: “For some women this will mean they lose their lives.”
Dr Sam Roberts, Nice’s chief executive, said it was “a regrettable case which we hope to resolve”.