Nice approves Kidney cancer drug
February 4th, 2009 -- Posted in Medicine | Comments OffNational Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) the body taked with approvind drugs for NHS has given the go ahead for a kidney cancer drug which can increase survival by a year.
A full report about this was on the BBC, excertp follows:
Sunitinib is one of the first drugs to be approved under new guidance urging a more liberal approach to treatments which only marginally extend life.
The decision applies to England and Northern Ireland. Wales has already approved the drug, but it is still not available in Scotland.
NICE’s chief executive Andrew Dillon said it had listened to the public.
“Many people have made the point very strongly that they regard the ability of the NHS to extend life as being of special importance,” he told the BBC.
“And so we looked at the way our advisory committees go about valuing extension to life.
“We wanted to make sure that they had enough flexibility in all circumstances to make a recommendation where drugs have the ability to give people some additional life.”
Sunitinib, known commercially as Sutent, was originally rejected last year for the treatment of advanced kidney cancer along with three other drugs.
Final advice on the use of these three drugs – as well as sunitinib – will be issued in March.
The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said it took into account the offer of the manufacturer, Pfizer, to provide the first cycle of sunitinib free to the NHS when making its decision.
The average daily cost of sunitinib is about £75, with an average six-week cycle costing in excess of £3,000.
Early last month, NICE agreed to extend the threshold at which drugs for terminally ill patients are deemed cost-effective.
Last year renal cancer experts criticised draft proposals to deny four treatments to patients with advanced kidney cancer, because they only extended life by a matter of months.
NICE said that while Avastin (bevacizumab), Nexavar (sorafenib), Sutent (sunitinib) and Torisel (temsirolimus) provided “significant gains” in survival, they did not meet cost effectiveness criteria.
The full story can be read on BBC’s website
