10.08.16
NICE recommends first treatment to be cut from new Cancer Drugs Fund
New NICE draft guidance said the body does not recommend prescribing brentuximab vedotin, a drug used to treat a form of Hodgkin’s lymphoma that is available on the Cancer Drugs Fund (CDF) list.
The guidance, which said there isn’t enough evidence to recommend the old CDF drug, comes just a few days after the reinvented Fund opened amidst warnings from the ABPI and a coalition of 15 cancer charities that the new CDF is sticking to now-outdated NICE guidelines.
Today’s guidelines, which won’t take effect until final guidance is issued to the NHS, said NICE’s independent committee recognised the evidence around the drug’s clinical effectiveness was “immature and limited”, and concluded the drug could not be considered a cost effective use of NHS money. Because of this, it cannot be recommended for routine use.
During the appraisal process, the company said it would not put forward a case to include the drug in the new CDF, especially since its patient population is small – just 50 to 60 patients are eligible for the specific treatment per year.
Professor Carole Longson, director of the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at NICE, recognised that the preliminary decision would be “disappointing” to eligible patients, but said they needed to make sure that drugs and treatments looked at what “will benefit patients and be a cost-effective use of NHS resources”.
In May, the chief executives of 15 cancer charities had already warned that the new CDF did not update NICE guidelines introduced in 1999 and, because of this, would result in fewer treatments being available.
Representatives from the ABPI also said in February that the decision to take away the CDF’s power to prescribe drugs without NICE approval could mean two-thirds of medicines would no longer be available.
Baroness Delyth-Morgan, CEO of Breast Cancer Now, said the new CDF will do “next to nothing to solve the wider problems” preventing patients from accessing the best cancer drugs. But a NICE spokesperson argued it would benefit patients and companies alike.
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