NICE have recommended a new cancer treatment for people with advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer. The new treatment has been recommended for use in adults who have had platinum-based chemotherapy.
The immunotherapy, also known as dostarlimab, could benefit 124 people a year across England as a second-line treatment for endometrial cancer (EC).
A dostarlimab infusion takes up to 30 minutes opposed to a round of chemotherapy which can take up to a day to administer.
Helen Knight, programme director in the Centre for Health Technology Evaluation at NICE, said: “We are committed to helping to provide early access for patients to promising new treatments, such as dostarlimab, which is available from today.
“Our committee concluded that people with previously treated advanced or recurrent endometrial cancer need new options and the overall evidence suggests that this treatment is more effective than current care so could offer a considerable improvement in quality of life.
“This is a significant development because dostarlimab provides, for the first time, a targeted immunotherapy treatment for people with the mismatch repair deficiency biomarker. Previously there were no targeted treatments licensed for this condition.
“While dostarlimab cannot be recommended for routine use in the NHS at this stage it is being recommended for use in the Cancer Drugs Fund so that more comparative data and long-term evidence can be collected to address clinical uncertainties.”
The most common type of EC is endometrioid carcinoma, which results in an estimated 2,162 deaths each year in the UK.
Currently, there are various treatments available for EC after having platinum-based chemotherapy but there are no standard second-line treatments, resulting in poor patient prognosis dur to limited survival benefit.
A price discount has been provided to the NHS, however had been kept confidential.
